Note: The "Past" footnotes are a work in progress.
If you know of a source that would be useful to other readers, consider passing
it along to me at reachpast@gmail.com.
The wide sweep of topics and time periods touched on in The Past Didn't Go
Anywhere make it difficult to cite comprehensively, without the resources
that are available in a scholarly institution. But I hope these notes will be
helpful, and I will do my best to keep adding information as I find it to
sections
-
where a historical fact is not widespread common knowledge
-
where I know of resources of use to readers who want to learn more
-
where immediate clarification seemed valuable
-
where I receive helpful comments from readers
In general, I will avoid citing
from Wikipedia, due to its frequent changes and partial reliability. Wikipedia
citations are included here when a quick sampling from it offers good summary
of arguments I've seen in more in-depth sources, or occasionally when they are
more articulate than other sources.
Apologies to fellow researchers
that sources are not currently cited in a standard, uniform format.
INSIDE FRONT -
Dedicated to Dr. Oscar
Klier...
In 1989, Oscar Klier founded a
path-breaking university in the
Mendoza
region of
Argentina
, to great acclaim from students
and scholars alike. In
Mendoza
, a wine-country region inland in
Argentina
, known for its conservatism, the
university was seen as a haven for new and open intellectual interchange. Local
power-brokers observing the progress of the project sought to obtain official
positions for themselves at the helm of the University. Klier declined to grant
them this, and his opponents, strongly tied to the Right-wing,
arch-conservative Opus Dei movement, proceeded to mount an anonymous campaign
of defamation against Klier throughout the area, distrubuting publicity
materials which drew upon Nazi-era themes of a Jewish outsider descending to
corrupt and destabilize a pure society with his foreign, cosmopolitan ideas.
The campaign drew strength, allowing Klier's attackers to accuse him of
extortion in order to force him to resign from the university.
Rather than endanger the university
itself, Klier submitted to pressures and resigned, and his former opponents
succeeded in gaining the reigns of the Universidad de Congreso. In an act of
self-satisfied power, they chose Hitler's Mein Kampf to
be the first book to be promoted using the virtual library Klier had helped to
create for the school.
Klier attempted to pursue
the case through legal channels, but encountered systematic silencing and
refusal to investigate, including within the Jewish community's official
defense organizations. He continues to seek support for an investigation into
the case.
In coming to know a variety of
Argentine Jewish community members and lay leaders, I found a view of contempt
for the organizations invested with the role of defending the Jewish community,
such as the DAIA, to be common. Many Jews I spoke to felt them to be partners
to the antisemitic power structure in Argentina's governing circles; a Jewish
"leadership" which sells out, rather than coming to the defense of, Jews
who are targeted. For more on Klier's case, read "An Open Letter to the
Authorities of AMIA," [in Spanish],
9/26/04
, at http://argentina.shalomonline.com/informes.asp?id=329
and Cherie Brown... Brown directs the National Coalition Building
Institute [www.ncbi.org] and has led the
pro-Israel peace organization Brit Tzedek v'Shalom [http://www.btvshalom.org]. Many activists I
interviewed came into contact with her theories on anti-Jewish oppression
through the Re-Evaluation Counseling community.
PAGE 1 - TWO
JEWS, A CRUMBLING EMPIRE, AND A STRUGGLING RESISTANCE MOVEMENT WALK INTO A
BAR...
PHOTO: Sidewalk stencil reads "Jews
- the new Nazis;" photographed in
Sydney
,
Australia
, May 2003.
A note on spelling: I use the spelling "antisemitism" to the
traditional “anti-Semitism,” following Prager and Telushkin (1983),
Emil Fackenheim and others who point out that the hyphenated term falsely
infers opposition to a movement of “Semitism”.
PAGE 2 -
ANTISEMITISM IS STILL A WORLD PROBLEM
Russia
, January 2005: 20 parliament members and 500
prominent citizens asked the country's Prosecutor General to ban all Jewish
organizations... The group
retracted the request - but not the charges themselves - after the
issue attracted protest from human rights groups. See a partial translation of
the document that was circulated at http://www.ncsj.org/AuxPages/032105RusPrav_trans.shtml
Compiled coverage at http://www.ncsj.org/AuxPages/012505_Duma.shtml
Elsewhere in the former Soviet
region, Ukraine's Conservative party asked President Yuschenko to open criminal
proceedings against Chasidic "Judeo-Nazi" rabbis for teaching from a
text described as racist in Jewish schools. The party was suported by MAUP, the
largest private university in the
Ukraine
, which prints 70 percent of the antisemitic
literature in the
Ukraine
and has 12 branches throughout the country. Founded
by "prominent representatives of the Ukrainian ruling elite,” MAUP
has given an honorary doctorate in history to David Duke, and hosted the
conference he co-chaired, “Zionism as the Greatest Threat to Contemporary
Civilization." See Jewish Telegraphic Agency coverage here: http://www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp?intarticleid=15763&intcategoryid=2
and here: http://www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp?intarticleid=16093&intcategoryid=2
Malaysia, October 2003: Addressing the world’s
Muslim leaders, prime minister Mahathir Mohamad declared... See CNN's coverage at http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/southeast/10/16/oic.mahathir/
See full text of Mohamad's speech at http://www.adl.org/Anti_semitism/malaysian.asp
Iran
, December 2005: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
declared the Holocaust a myth created by Jews. His bigotry was interspersed with more rational
declarations that the Palestinians shouldn't pay the price for the
European-produced Holocaust. See "Iranian leader: Holocaust a
'myth',"
12/14/05
, http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/12/14/iran.israel/
...demonstrators in a
government-supported protest proclaimed the Zionists had pushed
Denmark
to it.... At a protest of hundreds against the Danish cartoons of Muhammad,
protesters hurled firebombs at the Danish embassy but chanted “Death to
Israel
.” While the building burned, “a voice
broadcast by loudspeaker told the crowd that the cartoons were a Zionist
conspiracy, orchestrated by those ‘afraid of our
fundamentalism.'” See “Muslim Protests Against Cartoons
Spread,” New York Times,
2/7/06
.
As if the Danes, and the Europeans in general, wouldn't know how to be racist
if the "Zionists" weren't there to push them into it.
Hamshahri
,
Iran
's state-funded, widest-read newspaper, sponsored an
international cartoon contest...
See Hamshahri's rules of entry, http://pinteleyid.com/bavayz/hamshahri.html
In a conflict where Jews
played no part, it was Jews who were fair game. In the wake of the riots against the Danish cartoons,
denying, or "questioning" the Holocaust has become a standard way
that critics of Europe's racism & Islamophobia propose to measure freedom
of speech and fairness. The argument becomes, if you're really not prejudiced
against Muslims, you'll be willing to question the Holocaust. The
highest-ranking leader I've seen employ this tactic is Pakistani President
General Pervez Musharraf. See BBC interview at http://212.58.226.50/1/low/world/south_asia/4761338.stm
France
, January 2006:
...assumed, because he was
Jewish, he would be rich. Halimi's family - who couldn't afford to send him to
college, let alone pay the ransom demanded - followed police instructions to
remain passive, and were furious when he died and French police and media
resisted labeling it an act of antisemitism. See Int'l Herald Tribune coverage, http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/03/05/news/killing.php
Residents from throughout the
building joined in... See http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008006&ojrss=wsj
(Also, "“It was an open secret in the neighborhood that a Jew
was being held and tortured, and nobody called the police anonymously, not one
person," says Halimi's mother in an interesting interview where she
emphasizes, "The problem is not with Muslims. ...I grew up with Muslims;
the problem is with France." http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/news/article/20060322MotherofmurderedF.html )
Halimi's mother warned French police
of several recent kidnapping attempts on local Jews... http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/european_football/article733433.ece
(The woman acted as a lure said she'd been instructed to target Jews) http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,,1715029,00.html
...the orders to collect ransom from
synagogues... See http://ejpress.org/article/news/france/5916
After Halimi's murder the government
resisted acknowledging it as an antisemitic killing. Both police and higher levels of government attempted
to evade recognition of the anti-Jewish element of the crime. The public
prosecutor declared early on that http://ejpress.org/article/news/france/5916
See "Halimi's mother blames police," http://ejpress.org/article/6135 and
"The Murder of Ilan Halimi," http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008006&ojrss=wsj
See also:
"
France
arrests gang suspected in killing of Parisian
Jew," http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=684462&contrassID=19
"Paris
kidnap gang suspect arrested in
Ivory Coast
," http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/european_football/article734051.ece
Halimi's murder was incorrectly
hailed as the first antisemitic murder of a Jew in
France
in decades. It was apparently the second targeted
torture-murder of a French Jew in three years; but back in 2003, says the
sister of 23-yo Sebastien Sellam, "No Jewish organization wanted to touch
Sebastien's murder. Everyone was afraid to say it was anti-Semitic. Can you
imagine the noise it would make all over if they'd recognize the murder as
anti-Semitic? The whole country would be shocked. I'm sure their silence
stemmed from political considerations." See Ha'aretz, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=412333&contrassID=1&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y
PAGE
3 - ANTISEMITISM IS
STILL A WORLD PROBLEM (cont'd.)
After
Halimi's murder the government resisted acknowledging it as an antisemitic
killing. See
previous page's footnotes.
Ukraine
, August 2005:
Visibly recognizeable Jews were most vulnerable, with frequent attacks
on rabbis near synagogues. People who are easily identifiable as Jewish are the ones most
vulnerable to physical attack - noticeable Orthodox Jews like David
Rosensweig, killed in Canada [http://www.rickross.com/reference/skinheads/skinheads19.html]
Or the 33-yo leader of Uzbekistan's Jewish community who was murdered while
leaving his synagogue in February. Avraham Yagudayev Hacohen was fatally
beaten, no valuables stolen from him. [http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1139395509030&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull]
Or the
Moscow
rabbi who was among those attacked when a 20-yo man
entered a
Moscow
synagogue just before services, shouted, "I came
to kill you!" and proceeded to randomly stab people. Eight people were
injured but succeeded in subduing him. [http://www.jewishexponent.com/ViewArticle.asp?ArtID=2158] (The
stabber later told Russian TV; "Why did I try to kill him? That's a good
question indeed... My motto isn't about fighting Jews, it's about fighting the
evil that is Judaism." [http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9907/15/russia.hate.crimes/index.html])
Within such attacks, routine beatings
and street intimidations of Jews (like the ones discussed here in a 2001 ADL
report on
Russia
[http://www.adl.org/russia/russian_political_antisemitism_print.asp])
are still more the norm than murders. Then there are attacks designed to target
Jews (or those who care about Jews) whether they're visible or not. At least 5
times in
Russia
in 2002, antisemitic signs ( "Death to the
Jews," etc.) were rigged with bombs and placed prominently in the middle
of highways or roadsides throughout the country. The signs were designed so
that those people who passed by and were upset enough about antisemitism to try
to take the sign down got bombed when they did so. Victims suffered severe
burns, eye injuries, and shrapnel wounds to the legs, among other injuries. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2116454.stm]
When
yeshiva student Mordechai Molozhenov... See http://web.amnesty.org/report2006/ukr-summary-eng
Thirty rabbis begged for
action, saying, "Calls to violence against Judaism and Jews... See http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=619614
Argentina
, July 2005:
...the country’s
only major terror attacks have targeted Jewish sites... The other major terrorist attack in the country's
history occurred in 1992 at the Israeli Embassy, which also housed a Jewish
community center, including a childrens' daycare center, etc.). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Terrorism_in_Argentina
...the bombing of the country's central Jewish community center in
1994... See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMIA_Bombing
In July, the president
admitted that officials had for ten years been actively destroying evidence... See “Diez años estuvieron destruyendo”
("For ten years they were destroying"), in Pagina 12 newspaper
(in Spanish), http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elpais/1-53873-2005-07-19.html
...eleven years earlier, the military
dictatorship that killed 30,000 people disproportionately targeted Jews and
reserved special torture for Jewish prisoners. Evidence that continued to come out through the 1990s
revealed that during the dictatorship, which lasted from 1976 to 1983, "at
least two international Jewish organisations requested support from the
governments of
Brazil
and the
United States
in case an evacuation of Argentine Jews proved
necessary." In 1976,
Argentina
's chief rabbi met with Jewish leaders in
New York
to plea secretly for help to evacuate Jews from the
country. But as one British newspaper editor recalls (after describing how the
federal police headquarters where he was interrogated was decorated with a
giant swastika painting), "The Jewish community was very divided at the
time about whether it should be outspoken, for fear that this might only create
an even fiercer anti-Semitic backlash." [From "Jews targeted in
Argentina
's dirty war," by Uki Go-i, The Guardian
Unlimited,
3/24/99
, http://www.guardian.co.uk/GWeekly/Story/0,,307991,00.html ]
From www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Terrorism/Argentina_STATUS.html comes this illustration: "Despite the fact that Jews constitute only one
percent of the population of
Argentina
, an estimated ten percent of the victims of the dirty
war were Jews. That this war had an anti-Semitic side is attested to by
CONADEP, which devoted a section to illustrate this point. It is illustrated,
to quote the report, by the "particular brutality in the treatment of
prisoners of Jewish origin . Jews were not only tortured, but the torture often
took on an anti-Semitic form. The torturers painted swastikas on one Jewish
prisoner's back with a sharp pointed marker. Another torturer who called
himself the "great fuehrer" made Jewish prisoners shout "Hell
Hitler." [Declarations were made by torturers] that the Jewish problem was
second only to the problem of subversion. ...In one torture center Jews were
made to raise one hand and to shout "I love Hitler." One prisoner
remembered the ordeal of another prisoner, a Jew nicknamed "Chango,"
at the hands of his torturer called "Julian the Turk." Julian always
carried a key ring with a swastika and wore a crucifix around his neck. He made
Chango bark like a dog, wag as though he were a dog wagging his tail, and lick
his boots. Chango did very well at this. If he didn't, Julian would beat him.
CONADEP concluded that: All kinds of torture would be applied to Jews,
especially one which was extremely sadistic and cruel: "the
rectoscope," which consisted of inserting a tube into the victim's anus,
or into a woman's vagina, then letting a rat into the tube. The rodent would
try to get out by gnawing at the victim's internal organs." [Excerpted by
Third World Traveler for its section on
Argentina
's Dirty War, from State Terrorism and the United
States: From Counterinsurgency to the War on Terrorism, by Frederick H.
Gareau (Clarity Press, 2004).]
To understand the level of
antisemitic ideology and fantasy at the highest levels of the Argentine
governement during the dictatorship, the must-read memoir is Prisoner
Without a Name, Cell Without a Number [Original: Preso sin nombre,
celda sin numero] the autobiography of publisher Jacobo Timerman, who was
imprisoned and tortured partly for speaking out about the dictatorship, and
partly for being a Jew. Original publication 1981; 2002 English edition from
University
of
Wisconsin Press
, http://www.wisc.edu/wisconsinpress/books/2326.htm;
for 2004 Spanish edition see http://www.wisc.edu/wisconsinpress/books/3788.htm
The dictatorship was
rubber-stamped by
U.S.
approval. See "
U.S.
ok'd Dirty War,"
Miami
Herald,
12/4/03
, at http://www.globalpolicy.org/empire/history/2003/1204dirtywar.htm
Even in the
U.S.
, where Jews have had 200 years of exceptional
physical safety, it’s a background hum... Any discussion of the
U.S.
needs to be contextualized by understanding the U.S.
Christian Right. The Christian Right is able to draw on a huge base in Middle
America, out of which grow a wide spectrum of expressions, from overtly violent
antisemitic and racist movements such as Christian Identity, to harrassment of
Jewish students at the U.S. Air Force Academy (http://www.religioustolerance.org/relintolafa.htm),
to the utterly wacky but still creepy Dec. 2005 right-wing Christian furor over
the White House's "holiday cards" and organized boycotts of major
chain department stores who use the "Happy Holidays" slogan. Perhaps
the most important form it takes for international politics is the organized
right-wing Christian Zionist movement, which exerts its political and financial
strength to push for
Israel
's expansion, so that Armageddon and their messiah
will come - with Jews converted, enslaved or consigned to the pits of hell. The
Palestinians and Israelis who get killed in the conflict today are just
collateral damage in the plan.
See more on Christian Zionism at TheocracyWatch: http://www.theocracywatch.org/christian_zionism.htm
See also:
Good discussion
at Talk2Action: http://www.talk2action.org/story/2005/12/1/181232/117
"Jews and the Christian right: Is the honeymoon over?" by Michelle
Goldberg, http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/11/29/foxman/index_np.html
...the hit film that
restaged the public “Passion plays”... I'm speaking, of course, of Mel Gibson's The
Passion of the Christ. Mel
Gibson's denials of antisemitic beliefs behind his movie frustrated Jews
deeply, who frequently couldn't get Christians - usually ignorant of the
Passion plays' history, the historical circumstances of Jesus' death, and the
brutal consequences deicide charges have had for Jews for centuries since then
- to see our critiques of the movie as more than complaining, despite Gibson's
known personal defense of his high-profile, Holocaust-denying father. When
Gibson was arrested and blurted out routine world-control attacks on Jews, it
offered little consolation.
..."Passion
plays" which sparked annual Easter massacres of Jews in medieval
Europe
... Passion plays are a traditional Christian theater form performed during Easter,
which dramatize the lead-up to the crucificion of Jesus. Traditionally Easter
celebration and the performance of the Passion plays brought out mob violence
against Jews in medieval
Europe
. (One essay puts is this way: "When Passover night arrives, the cups of wine are
filled and the prayers and songs of the holiday are joyfully chanted... But
that's not how Passover was celebrated for the Jews of medieval
Europe
.
When Passover arrived, Jews celebrated with extreme caution and fear, unsure of
the violence that could be unleashed against them," because Passover falls
just before Easter and the violence it unleashed from their Christian
neighbors.)
Suggested Reading:
"Loosely based on a true story," by
John Dominic Crossan, Tikkun (March/April 2004); available for a $10 year-long
archive membership at http://tikkun.org/archive/backissues/xtik0403/politics/040312a.html/view?searchterm=jesus%20passion or see www.pinteleyid.com/myths.html
Christ Killers: The Jews and the Passion from the Bible to the Big Screen,
by Jeremy Cohen (Oxford University Press, 2007) http://www.amazon.com/Christ-Killers-Passion-Bible-Screen/dp/0195178416
See also:
Katha Pollitt's
essay on The Passion in The Nation: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20040329/pollitt
FAQ on the ADL's response to
"The Passion": http://www.adl.org/Interfaith/gibson_qa.asp
Background on Passion Plays http://www.flholocaustmuseum.org/history_wing/antisemitism/arts/passion_plays.cfm
"Why Some Jews Fear 'The Passion,'" by Colin Hansen, http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/newsletter/2004/feb20.html
...several other oppressed groups are
in more imminent danger as we speak. I'll speak of the
U.S.
specifically, though many groups are clearly in great
danger internationally. State violence (police brutality for instance),
institutional inequality in health care, and other conditions have long
endangered the lives of millions of people of color in this country and remain
bad. But under current conditions, I am particularly worried about Arab
Americans; not only about what has already happened to many, in terms of
detententions, disappearances, etc., but about the possible dangers to their
physical safety and political freedom in the coming years.
PAGE 4 - HOW
COULD JEWS BE OPPRESSED?
Jews are isolated... While the clearest example of this
is the ghettos that began in
Italy
and mellahs that began in
Morocco
(the word "ghetto" itself originated as the Italian name for the
neighborhood in which Jews were made to live), isolation has become an
entrenched pattern for Jews and can continue to manifest itself without being
done "to" them. In terms of vulnerability to attack, Jews are
endangered by isolation, whether outside forces are pushing them into it, or
they are themselves remaining isolated out of habit.
In hopes of gaining
safety, Jews are pressured to cooperate with rulers, to silence themselves and
to not rise up against the powerful, for fear of greater targeting. Thanks to Penny Rosenwasser and
Cherie Brown for urging me not to leave out the double nature of Jewish
vulnerability: fear and seduction.
...an idea that got
institutionalized [by] Roman imperialism... The
Roman Empire
's promotion of blame of Jews for
Jesus' crucifixion is itself an example of the classic dynamic of ruling elites
scapegoating Jews to distract from their crimes. The
Roman Empire
crucified Jesus; he was one of
tens of thousands of Jewish rebels executed by the empire during years of
Jewish rebellion against the Roman occupation.
The Romans, of course, were able to use
a pre-existing myth of "the Jews'" culpability for Jesus' death,
which came from developing Christian theology. Although early Christians had
been one of several Jewish factions involved in intra-communal conflict, by a
few generations after the crucifixion they had grown separate from the Jewish
community, and blaming "the Jews" had become part of the Gospels then
being codified. (An excellent resource that details this change is the chart in
John Dominic Crossan's "Loosely Based on a True Story," above.)
In this last sense, the blame-the-Jews
version of the crucifixion is also a proto-example of the other classic dynamic
of anti-Jewish oppression: how oppressed groups come to put their energy into
targeting Jews instead of confronting the ruling systems at the root of both
groups' suffering. It seems to me logical that the early
Christians would blame "the Jews," instead of the Empire itself, for
Jesus' death: after all, it was dangerous to badmouth the rulers, and as one
target of the Empire's repression, Christians knew it. It was much easier, I
presume, to blame another group being targeted by imperial repression.
Eventually, once the
Roman Empire
made Christianity the official religion, it became
unseemly to be the Empire guilty of killing God; much better to
institutionalize the theology which decisively drew the blame to Jews.
Antisemitism as we know
it, with its images of special, evil Jewish power, began as a Christian,
European phenomenon... For the history of the foundations of anti-Jewish
oppression in the Church, see Constantine's
Sword: The Church and the Jews - A History, by James Carroll (Mariner Books, 2001). See
it at Google Books
This didn't mean that
non-Christian cultures couldn't oppress Jews, but that where it
appeared in those cultures it didn't initially come out of an ideology that
imputed the source of evil in the world to Jews, as Christian lore about the
crucifixion had come to do. Quoting from Wikipedia: "Bernard
Lewis distinguishes between "normal" prejudice against and
"normal" persecution of different nations or beliefs on the one hand,
and "antisemitism" on the other hand.[68] Lewis confines his definition of antisemitism to "the special and peculiar
hatred of the Jews, which derives its unique power from the historical
relationship between Judaism and Christianity, and the role assigned by
Christians to the Jews in their writings and beliefs".[69] As M. Shahid Alam and others would argue, Lewis can
scarcely be considered to be motivated by bias towards Islam. [See Alam's piece
in Al Ahram, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2002/616/op13.htm]
...though Jews faced
mistreatment in Muslim lands, it was a more generic 2nd-class citizenship
applied to all non-Muslims.The phenomenon of dhimma, a protected but inferior status, was hardly
utopic for Jews or other religious minorities, but it was quite different from
persecution experienced by Jews under Christian rule. As one Wikipedia writer
puts it, "[I]n general, the Muslim attitude toward dhimmis was
one of contempt instead of hate, fear, or envy, and was rarely expressed in
ethnic or racial terms." [19] See
discussion of dhimma and dhimmis, along with some sources, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhimma (viewed
4/10/07
)
...with European
colonization and inroads made by the Nazis... On colonization, as Wikipedia puts
it: "According to Mark Cohen in The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies,
most scholars conclude that Arab anti-Semitism in the modern world arose in the
nineteenth century, against the backdrop of conflicting Jewish and Arab
nationalism, and was imported into the Arab world primarily by
nationalistically minded Christian Arabs (and only subsequently was it
"Islamized").[77] ...George Gruen attributes the increased animosity towards Jews in the Arab world to several factors, including the breakdown of the Ottoman
Empire and traditional Islamic society; domination by Western colonial
powers under which Jews gained a disproportionatly larger role in the
commercial, professional, and administrative life of the region; the rise of Arab
nationalism, whose proponents sought the wealth and positions of local Jews
through government channels; resentment over Jewish nationalism and the Zionist movement; and the readiness of unpopular regimes to scapegoat local Jews for political purposes.[78]" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism#Antisemitism_and_the_Muslim_world
When
modern antisemitism started to emerge in Arab countries, it tended to begin
within Arab Christian communities that had had contact with European Christian
communities. This is illustrated by the fact that the first major modern act of
antisemitism in Arab countries was the Damascus Blood Libel, which arose in
1840 out of a Syrian order of Capuchin monks that framed a Syrian Jew for the
murder of an Italian friar. [http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/reaction.html]
"According
to Mark
Cohen in The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies, most scholars
conclude that Arab anti-Semitism in the modern world arose in the nineteenth
century, against the backdrop of conflicting Jewish and Arab nationalism, and
was imported into the Arab world primarily by nationalistically minded
Christian Arabs (and only subsequently was it "Islamized").[77]" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism#Antisemitism_and_the_Muslim_world,
viewed
4/9/07
]
On
Nazi efforts within Arab societies, a recent book is Among the Righteous:
Lost Stories from the Holocaust's Long Reach into Arab Lands, by Robert
Satloff (Public Affairs, 2006). http://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/publicaffairsbooks-cgi-bin/display?book=9781586483999 Interesting reader reviews at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Among-Righteous-Stories-Holocausts-Reach/dp/1586483994
PAGE 5 - HOW COULD JEWS BE OPPRESSED? (cont'd.)
and
AND WHAT EXACTLY ARE JEWS, ANYWAY?
Over its history,
antisemitism has shifted forms between religious, racial and political
persecution based on the times... See a
great tiny introduction to the history of anti-Jewish oppression at “The
Longest Hatred,” in New Internationalist 372 (2004) http://newint.org/features/2004/10/01/history
SIDEBAR: AND WHAT EXACTLY ARE JEWS, ANYWAY?
Jews are a globally-dispersed,
multi-ethnic culture which is linked by a shared history of diaspora, and a
religion (Judaism). Thanks to
Daniel Lang-Levitsky for articulating a key piece of this for me in a way I
haven't been able to do before.
For resources for and information about Jews
of color and global Jewish diversity, check out the following organizations:
Kulanu: All of Us, http://www.kulanu.org/
Ayecha Resource Organization, http://www.ayecha.org/
"B'chol Lashon," a great newsletter
put out by the Institute for Jewish and Community Research, http://jewishresearch.org/newsletter.htm
Also see their book, In Every Tongue: The Racial and Ethnic Diversity of
the Jewish People, http://jewishresearch.org/Book-Tongue.htm
Forthcoming in 2007 is The Colors of
Jews: Racial Politics and Radical Diasporism, by Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz http://www.diasporism.net/
Disguised as a feature article, this is an
excellent introduction to the topic: "Black Jew illuminates the diversity
of Judaism," http://www.philly.com/inquirer/magazine/20070405_Black_Jew_illuminates_diversity_of_Judaism.html
An awesome introduction to Mizrachi and
Sephardi experiences is The Flying Camel: Essays on Identity by Women of
North African and Middle Eastern Jewish Heritage, edited by Loolwa
Khazzoom (New York: Seal Press, 2003), which also approaches the topic through
the eyes of women.
For an introduction to the Ibo Jewish
communities of
Nigeria
, watch the trailer for the forthcoming documentary, Re-Emerging:
The Jews of Nigeria, at http://www.re-emergingfilm.com/Home.html
Ashkenazi Jews have a vibrant ethnic identity
that has also been pushed underground by genocide and pressures to assimilate.
The most active center of the movement to reclaim Ashkenazi culture is in the
Yiddish language revival. For resources on learning Yiddish language, see http://pinteleyid.com/yiddish/gofurtherwithyiddish.pdf.
Connect with the growing Yiddish cultural movement through these pages:
http://www.yiddishbreak.com/
http://www.yivoinstitute.org/about/index.php?tid=57&aid=146
...others are ethnic, secular
(=non-religious) Jews. Though a
majority of Jews in the
U.S.
and
Israel
are passively or actively secular, this is one of the
topics with the fewest published resources about it. Two good organizations to
reach out to, or to study, are:
Workmens' Circle / Arbeter Ring, http://www.circle.org
Congress of Secular Jewish Organizations
(CSJO), http://www.csjo.org
(One of the more commonly-known
organizations, the Society for Humanistic Judaism, rather than promoting
actually secular culture, is more centered on creating religiously-styled
rituals and communities for Jews who do not believe in God. http://www.shj.org/)
...a growing number of communities
are “coming out” as Jews. Examples include the emerging community of b'nei anusim (children
of the forced ones) in Portugal [See an example in this letter, http://www.masortiworld.org/news/monthly-report/11-05/kehillot.htm],
or the many different communities throughout Latin America and the Southwestern
United States of descendants of anusim (also known as Marranos):
Sephardic Jews who fled the Inquisition, maintained hidden identities in their
new communities, and transmitted to the generations that followed them veiled
Jewish customs, which have in a number of communities lasted to the present
day. A cool book to read is The Mezuzah in the Madonna's Foot: Oral
Histories Exploring Five Hundred Years in the Paradoxical Relationship of Spain
and the Jews (since republished with a new subtitle). Inspired by her own
childhood escape from the Holocaust through
Spain
in hiding, the author researched several hidden
communities that have begun the process of reclaiming their Jewish identities: http://home.earthlink.net/~talexy/mezuzah.htm
A fantastic memoir on this topic from an
Ashkenazi perspective is After Long Silence, by Helen Fremont (Random
House, 2000). http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780385333702&view=excerpt
PAGE
6 - "BUT ARABS ARE SEMITES!"
After 60 years of
fostering dictators and repressing democratic movements in Arab countries... If we mark the beginning of this history with
FDR’s deal with King Saud in 1945, in which
Roosevelt
agreed that the
U.S.
would prop up the Saudi regime in exchange for access
to oil. See "The Geopolitics of War," by Michael T. Klare, The
Nation,
11/5/01
,
at http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/2001/11/05_klare_geopolitics.htm
U.S.
Arabs and Muslims since 9/11... Muslims remain in danger both from government
targeting and from popular scapegoating. "In U.S., fear and distrust of
Muslims runs deep," Reuters, Mon Dec 4, 2006,
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=reutersEdge&storyID=2006-12-04T111959Z_01_NOA440670_RTRUKOC_0_USA-MUSLIMS-FEAT.xml&pageNumber=0&imageid=&cap=&sz=13&WTModLoc=NewsArt-C1-ArticlePage3
As
Israel
today annexes even more
West Bank
land, the
U.S.
government funds it, cheered by
America
's powerful Christian Right.
See for example Stephen Zunes, “The Influence
of the Christian Right on U.S. Middle East Policy,” Foreign Policy In Focus (
Silver City
,
NM
:
Interhemispheric Resource Center,
June
28, 2004
) at http://www.fpif.org/papers/0406christian.html
Meanwhile,
Israel
responds to Hizbollah... Again, conveniently encouraged
by the
U.S.
See "How
Washington
Goaded
Israel
," by Stephen Zunes,
8/25/06
. http://www.alternet.org/story/40797 or http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/3444
Modern times brought 150
years of European colonialism to Arab lands... If we date the beginning as
Napoleon's invasion of
Egypt
in 1798. [http://www.country-studies.com/egypt/the-french-invasion-and-occupation,-1798-1801.html]
New French laws purportedly aimed at
pacifying tensions have now outlawed Muslim dress in schools. The laws, based on long post-Revolutionary French
precedents of suppressing religious expression in the public sphere, fall most
heavily on Muslim students, but also outlaw religious Jewish students from
wearing their traditional headcoverings (called yarmulkes or kipot), or perhaps
Christian students who wear large crosses. See http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/12/11/france.religion.reut/
As one activist, Lila Charef, said against the ban, "'What really
struck me was the collective collusion against these children, who were forced
to choose between their desire to study and succeed, as many of these pupils
were brilliant students, and their religious convictions. I think this was the
hardest thing for these girls.'" http://www.redpepper.org.uk/europe/x-may2005-hijab.htm
PHOTO: Palestinian photographer
Nasser Ishtaya holds his newborn daughter, Dunya. See "U.N. envoy says humanitarian situation in
West Bank
'dire,'" Associated Press,
4/20/02
[http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2002/apr/20/un_envoy_says/]
PAGE
7 - SIDEBAR: A TERM WE DIDN'T FREELY CHOOSE
...it was chosen as a chic, new
scientific word... The term
"came into use [in the 1870s] to describe hostility to the Jewish or
Semitic race, posing as a 'scientific' issue, as distinguished from earlier
'superstitious' or religious hatred." [Albert S. Lindemann, Anti-Semitism
Before the Holocaust, p. 8]. In a time when all things
"scientific" had become hip, and cultured Europeans were embarrassed
to be associated with anything so primitive as religion or superstition, it
became passe to be seen as being against Jews because of old religious
prejudices. Leading Darwinist intellectuals, like Ernst Haeckel, "felt
that the historical persistence of anti-Semitism must have a rational basis: he
could not believe that the highly evolved moral sense of the Aryan race was
capable of maintaining an irrational prejudice." [
Graves
, The Emperor's New Clothes: Biological Theories of Race At the Millenium,
(
Rutgers
University
Press, 2002) p. 129-130.]
...to show that Jews were an inferior
race (not a religion that they could convert out of)... Part of the motivation for this development in
anti-Jewish theory was that Jews had begun to be successful at breaking down
barriers and integrating themselves into German society by converting to
Christianity in large numbers.
They built an
organization to advocate discrimination against Jews, the Antisemites' League. The League (in German, Antisemiten-Liga)
was the first formal attempt at creating a popular political movement based on
anti-Jewish targeting. (In The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary
History, Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, eds., [New York:
Oxford University Press, 1980] p. 272.) and which promoted a political platform
to expel Jews from
Germany
.
...they couldn't care less that they
were using it inaccurately by designating it for Jews specifically. "Eugen Duhring argued that anti-Semitism is an
inaccurate designation, [writing,] 'It [the Jewish people] is a specific tribe,
which has developed the characteristics of a race in the most marked opposition
to other human beings, and not the entire Semitic race that comes into question
in our modem culture and society." Nietzsche and the Jewish Question,
Robert C. Holub, New German Critique, No. 66, Special Issue on the Nineteenth
Century. (Autumn, 1995), pp. 94-121. (104-105) or http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0094-033X%28199523%290%3A66%3C94%3ANATJQ%3E2.0.CO%3B2-W
...they [Jews] have accepted the term
to describe the historical experience of being targeted for being Jews. Jews, like all oppressed peoples, have the right to
reject this term and choose their own terms. But if a movement does grow among
Jews to choose a term for themselves that describes their oppression - be it
'anti-Jewish oppression' or another term - it remains offensive for anyone,
Jewish or non-Jewish, to refuse to discuss the targeting of Jews because they
reject the term.
...a larger oppression that both
groups experience: Orientalism. As two different pheonmena, Orientalism and specific anti-Jewish oppression /
antisemitism can conflict. For instance, Jews have at times been framed by
general Orientalist anti-Jewish visions of them as highly sexual,
"dirty," or sexually depraved. At other times, anti-Jewish oppression
has painted Jewish men as weak, "feminine" and asexual, or Jewish
women as prudes, sexually selfish, or disinterested, as is common in derisive
"jokes" about "JAPs."
FOOTNOTE: Millions of Jews are of Arab (&
Persian) descent... Learn more
about these Jews, who are called Mizrachim (from the Hebrew for
"East") at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mizrahi_Jews
FOOTNOTE: ...as well as racism in the Jewish
community. See a number of discussions
of these experiences in the essays in the anthology edited by Loolwa Khazzoom, The
Flying Camel: Essays on Identity by Women of North African and Middle Eastern
Jewish Heritage (Seal Press, 2003).
PAGE 8 - MEET THE AMAZING,
DISAPPEARING OPPRESSION and INTERNALIZED
OPPRESSION
…it became government practice in Christian
society about 1,700 years ago… While
Christian thinkers had developed the textual base and theological arguments of
anti-Jewish philosophy earlier, anti-Jewish practices only began to be backed
up by the authority of rulers in the 4th century, when the Emperor
Constantine took on Christianity as his own religion. When the Emperor promoted
a vision of "the Jews, who have impiously defiled their hands with enormous
sin, and are, therefore, deservedly afflicted with blindness of soul," and
urged his subjects to "have nothing in common with the detestable Jewish
crowd; for we have received from our Saviour a different way," it gave common anti-Jewish beliefs a new
force. . Quote from Eusebius. "Life of
Constantine (Book III)", 337 CE, (viewed 4/17/07) [http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/25023.htm] This intensified when
succeeding governments made Christianity the official religion of empire and
installed laws against Jews; what began as laws against intermarriage between
Jews and Christians came by the early 400s to include laws
against Jews being allowed employment in the government or army; not being
permitted to build new synagogues, or being punished with death for advocating
conversion to Judaism. By the 600s much worse legal conditions were beginning
in different regions of Christendom. See a detailed list of legal codes at http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/legislation300_800.html
...only stopped having
official
Vatican
approval in 1965. Twenty years after the Holocaust,
the Catholic Church took a historic step in issuing the Nostra
Aetate statement by the Ecumenical
Council of Vatican II (also referred to as simply, "Vatican Two").
Nostra Aetate was the first official directive from the Catholic Church that
Catholic school teachers, local clergy and other institutions throughout the
world should stop teaching that "the Jews" killed Jesus and
collectively bear the guilt of deicide (murder of God). This had gigantic
implications for Catholic institutions and the safety of Jews around the world.
There are still sects of Catholicism, such as the one that Mel Gibson's
Holocaust-denying father belongs to, that officially reject and fight Vatican
Two.
(To learn about the interfaith process that helped bring about Nostra Aetate,
see http://www.ushmm.org/research/center/presentations/features/details/2005-12-07/)
Partly it’s
that it allows Jews success. Jews have responded to this through their everyday choices. The insecurity of
Jewish life has led Jews to push hard for upward mobility; especially since
having money could sometimes cushion the blows of anti-Jewish attacks (money
could help in pleading with royal authorities to reverse anti-Jewish decrees or
expulsion edicts, when a land became dangerous for Jews and only those who
could pay passage out could flee, etc.) - and to adopt trades that could be
easily "carried" with Jews when they were pushed out of a land, or
which required great skill and so would be in demand wherever Jews had to flee
to (medicine, etc.).
This higher-than-usual professional status led to Jews being extremely visible in
many societies compared to their small numbers. For instance, today, many
people are surprised to find out that Jews, who number about 13 million people
worldwide, make up only 2/10ths of a percent of the world's population, and
1.8% of the U.S. Wealth and visibility for some Jews has not necessarily been
positive for Jews; money has tended to save individual Jews but not Jewish
communities, and visibility has meant that Jews were made even easier targets
of public scapegoating. [Figures based on population statistics from 2006.]
Partly it’s that it
moves in cycles. A
great activist resource on this issue is the skit, “The Cyclical Nature
of Jewish Oppression,” by Progressives Challenging Anti-Semitism Among Progressives (1998),
excellent to stimulate conversation in groups and as a participatory exercise
in workshops. [http://www.pinteleyid.com/readings/cyclical_skit.htm]
Internalized oppression affects all oppressed groups. The
National
Resource
Center
to End Violence Against Native Women describes
internalized oppression this way. "External oppression is the unjust
exercise of authority and power by one group over another. It includes imposing
one group's belief system, values and life ways over another group. External
oppression becomes internalized oppression when we come to believe and act as
if the oppressor's beliefs system, values, and life way is reality.
"Self-hate" and "internalized racism" are other ways of
saying internalized oppression. The result of internalized oppression is shame
and the disowning of our individual and cultural reality. …Internalized
oppression means the oppressor doesn't have to exert any more pressure, because
we now do it to ourselves and each other. Divide and conquer works."
A Jew coping with internalized oppression might believe stereotypes about Jews,
point undeserved blame at other Jews, feel shame or disgust at parts of their
looks or behavior that they think of as Jewish, feel general low self-esteem,
find it hard to take a stand against antisemitism, or feel a desire to
emphasize to others how different or separate they are from other Jews.
Internalized Jewish oppression manifests itself seriously within Jewish
communal groups in the disrespect and harshness with which Jews treat one
another, which goes beyond the often endearing and healthy cultural Jewish
mannerisms I've experienced among my Ashkenazi communities of bluntness,
willingness to argue, frank honesty, loud interactions and unsubdued emotions.
Like all oppression, internalized oppression can be an
unaware process; one we don't perceive ourselves as buying into or
committing.
Some comments on internalized oppression as it affects:
Native women: http://www.letswrap.com/nadvinfo/internal.htm
People with disabilities: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/disability-studies/archiveuk/Mason,%20Michelene/mason.pdf
Latinos: http://academic.udayton.edu/race/01race/latinos01.htm
African-Americans: http://www.blackcommentator.com/134/134_black_identidy_1.html
Asian/Pacific Islanders: http://preventiontraining.samhsa.gov/cti06/HEALACT4.HTM
Jewish people,
especially men, often perceive themselves as physically weak… It was internalized oppression and the
assumption of weakness that led Jews like Walter Rathenau to write inspiring
messages like the following to his fellow German Jews: "Your east Mediterranean
appearance is not very well appreciated by the northern tribes. You should
therefore be more careful...[not to become] the laughing stock of a race
brought up in a strictly military fashion [Note: Rathenau is referring to the
non-Jewish German nation]. As soon as you have recognized your unathletic
build, your narrow shoulders, your clumsy feet, your sloppy, roundish shape,
you will resolve to dedicate a few generations to the renewal of your outer
appearance." [quoted in Lindemann, Anti-Semitism Before the Holocaust,
p. 77]
Partly as a reaction against
that self-image, Jews in the 20th century have had what sometimes amounts to an
obsession with becoming physically strong and embracing sports. Jews in the
U.S.
, for instance, were the first professional basketball
players and a major force in boxing, in what became a dual feat of
Americanizing themselves and proving their physical abilities. This also
occurred in
Europe
, where Jewish youth groups sprouted up around
exercise, sports and self-defense training, partly as an effort at
self-empowerment, and partly as a response to being banned from gentile sports
teams and clubs. (See for example the emergence of Jewish dueling clubs in
Western Europe
.) The major example of this, however, is in Israeli
culture. Israeli society's conception of dignity is rooted in the guaranteed
ability to defend itself militarily, and was deeply impacted by cultural
efforts to create “The New Jew,” glorifying physical strength as a
direct reaction to shame about Jewish identity and real-and-perceived weakness
in
Europe
and elsewhere in the Diaspora.
We were legally banned from being allowed to carry weapons
...
European bans on Jews carrying weapons were called off at times
and not enforced at others; however, they had more power as conditions worsened
for Jews in the 14th century. See discussion of these laws and Jews'
relation to armed self-defense is found in Biale, Power and Powerlessness
in Jewish History, 72-77. Under the Pact of 'Umar, Jews (specifically,
tolerated religious minorities) in Muslim lands were not allowed to bear arms. [Mark
Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages, (Princeton
University Press, 1994) 61.]
European society did not
permit us in mainstream professions (farming, etc.)… "More and more, Jews were restricted to
those economic activities considered the least desirable, such as moneylending,
and to those that did not engender competition for Christian guilds. For
instance, medieval merchant guilds successfully blocked Jews from selling their
goods in shops or at the marketplace, while craft goods prevented Jews from
manufacturing goods. Ironically, before the clergy and Christian guilds
successfully enlisted the support of the royal authority to restrict Jews from
manufacturing activities, many early medieval European Jewish artisans had
distinguished themselves as metal and gold workers, dyers of cloth, and
glassblowers. Consequently, Jews were left to peddle goods in the street or
countryside and to buy and sell secondhand wares, particularly clothing. Prior
to the Holocaust, much had been made of the fact that Jews rarely pursued the
farming profession. The dearth of Jews in farming in
Europe
has a foundation in medieval European
prohibitions against Jewish property ownership. Weiss has properly noted that
land constituted a principal source of power and status in the Middle Ages in
Christian Europe, and he who owned land had power over the serfs and a say in
the selection of local priests. The Christian Church also depended on the payment
of a church tithe and feared that Jewish landholders might refuse to pay the
church tithe. To that end, the church strongly discouraged its faithful from
selling land to Jews or offering land to Jews in exchange for debts." From Roots of Hate: Anti-Semitism in
Europe
Before the Holocaust, by William I. Brustein, (
Cambridge
University
Press, 2003), p. 178-179. http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0521774780&id=s0-JVndQl8UC&pg=PP1&lpg=PP1&ots=5O-t-1p8YU&dq=%22roots+of+hate%22&sig=0orWgEiQ0Z75tORhqg3sTH6l0Uk#PPP1,M1
…often feel disgust about ourselves and our bodies,
because, as the main racial ‘Other’ in Europe, European society and
popular culture systematically based its images of what was ugly and disgusting
on our Jewish faces, and its fantasies of what our bodies looked like. The
classical European images of both the witch and the devil invoke stereotypic Jewish
facial features; Jews, in turn were believed to have horns, like the devil. See
for example Mortimer Ostow, "Myth And Madness: A Report Of A
Psychoanalytic Study Of Antisemitism," International Journal of
Psycho-Analysis
,
77
:
15-31
(1996).
An
interesting discussion of perceptions of the Jewish body is in Sander Gilman's The
Jew's Body (New York: Routledge, 1991).
Gentile European intellectuals, including thinkers who heavily
influenced the Left, like Hegel, taught that Jews were a people
‘outside’ of history... "Hegel saw
European culture as the core of world history, and as essentially a Christian
culture... According the Hegelian dialectic, every cultural form
makes some true, genuine contribution to world history...after which it is
sublated (aufgehoben) and disappears from the historical scene. Yet
the Jews continued to survive long after their raison d'etre [basic,
essential purpose; reason for existence] had disappeared - indeed, after they
no longer had a genuine history in Hegel's sense, but existed merely as the
corpse of their extinguished essence. [When Jews began to claim a place in the
modern world through the French Revolution, Hegel was willing for Jews to have
rights] but he did not know what to do with Jews in modernity as Jews, nor
could he explain their survival in terms of his system. ...Hegel went on to see
post-Christian Jewish life as a dead repetition of meaningless
existence[.]" (Yirmiyahu Yovel, Dark
Riddle: Hegel, Nietzsche and the Jews [University
Park, PA: The Pennsyvania State University Press, 1998], xii-xiii.)
….that because Jews had no land of our own, we were a deformed
group that could not play a role in history and revolution. The view that Jews, as a people without a
nation, were outside of full people-hood and the ability to take part in
history, played a huge role in the creation of Zionism, as Jews internalized
that belief and assumed the correctness of the European thinkers who had
written them off. For the results in Zionist politics, see the essay
"Exile, History and the Nationalization of Jewish Memory: Some reflections
on the Zionist notion of History and Return," by Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, at http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:1bclMBwj89sJ:www.cjs.upenn.edu/meyerhofflecturepaper.doc+www.cjs.upenn.edu/meyerhofflecturepaper.doc&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=firefox-a
– "THE USEFUL JEW"
& INTERNALIZED OPPRESSION (cont'd.)
...European Jews, having been excluded from many
traditional trades, often didn’t fit neatly into those categories. On the other hand, in certain regions Jews were heavily
concentrated in industrial labor. In the Russian Empire, the massive numbers of
Jews in factories made them the base of the early Russian revolutionary
movement.
…Jews learned we didn’t matter; our only
meaningful role in changing the world would be supporting other peoples’
struggles… The example of leading
Russian Marxist Pavel Axelrod is instructive. Axelrod's politics became
universalist after he stopped believing in God and read the work of theorists
like Ferdinand Lassalle. "Persuaded that the term 'proletariat,' as used
by Lassalle, referred to everyone oppressed by the rich and privileged,
[Axelrod] concluded that once this broad class was liberated the Jewish
question would automatically be solved. 'And I decided,' he wrote, 'to devote
myself to work for the liberation of all the poor and oppressed of
Russia
."' ["Pavel Axelrod: A
Conflict between Jewish Loyalty and Revolutionary Dedication," by Abraham
Ascher, Russian Review, Vol. 24, No. 3.
(Jul., 1965), pp. 249-265.
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0036-0341%28196507%2924%3A3%3C249%3APAACBJ%3E2.0.CO%3B2-D
]
It is
my belief that the common non-identification of 1960s and '70s Jewish radicals
as Jewish was a result of internalized oppression. It is fair and valid to say
that radical white Jews, observing the racism that brutalized people of color,
perceived their own people as simply a privileged group in comparison, and thus
were disinterested in Jewish identity and concerns. However, the renaissance of the New Left’s identity work took
place during the first generation born after the Holocaust. For the
non-politicized members of an oppressed group, it might be natural that
immediately after the greatest mass murder in their people's history, they
would primarily respond through seeking short-term safety by assimilating as
hard as possible. But presumably, the radicalized members of that group would
take on the role of calling for self-organization to end their group’s
oppression. Instead, Jewish radicals, like non-politicized Jews tended to cling
to the safety and anonymity of whiteness. This doesn’t seeem to be
healthy, normal behavior for the radical leaders of a group just emerging from
such obvious oppression.
SIDEBAR: "THE USEFUL JEW"
the Court Jew – "During the Middle Ages, Christian nobles frequently recognized the economic advantages of having Jewish financial advisers. This advantage always had to be weighed against the political upheavals created by the Church and the townspeople against the Jews. In the early 17th century, the use of special individual Jews by the nobility became almost institutionalized in
Central Europe
. Since most provinces had expelled their Jews, it was awkward having financial advisers who were Jewish. These special exceptions were called "Court Jews," and they were tremendously beneficial to the nobility. …The Court Jews were exempt from any rabbinic jurisdiction. The Court Jews were not answerable to the Jewish community for they life style or behavior. … They tried in every way possible to assimilate into the non-Jewish world. Thanks to his privileged position, the Court Jew was often able to act as shtadlan [intercessor with gentile powers] for the Jewish groups; frequently he was the head of the community and could procure the right to establish new settlements and prepare the way for emancipation. The Jewish community had mixed feelings about the Court Jew. … They associated the Court Jews more with the outside world than the inside world." [http://www.jewishgates.com/file.asp?File_ID=53]
Ruth Gay describes how Court Jews were the focal point of backlash when conditions took a downward turn in a kingdom; with individual violence against the Court Jew being followed at times by mass collective punishment for the Jewish community, such as expulsion. "The fate of the Court Jew was, then, no private matter; a fallen Court Jew could carry a whole community down to destruction with him." See more on Court Jews in Gay's chapter, "From the Middle Ages to the Court Jews," in The Jews of Germany: A Historical Portrait, by Ruth Gay, (Yale University Press, 1992) pages 62-97 (this quote from p. 85).
An incredibly eloquent piece about how the 'Court Jew' pattern continues today is Josh Ruebner's "An Open Letter to Paul Wolfowitz: To My Former Dean and Other 'Court Jews,'" http://listserv.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0303&L=justwatch-l&O=D&P=50699
QUOTE: I know
what antisemitism can be and do, when we internalize it... Quoted from Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz, pioneer thinker
about Jewish oppression and Jewish identity, in a
March 26, 2006
speech to "Facing A Challenge Within: A
Progressive Scholars' and Activists' Conference on Antisemitism and the
Left,"
Newark
,
NJ
. http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:fPRNDb_5TeYJ:www.diasporism.net/files/Antisemitism_on.doc
PAGE 10 -
LET'S LOOK AT AN EXAMPLE OF HOW ANTISEMITISM WORKS.
and ANTISEMITISM
IS ALREADY HERE IN OUR MOVEMENTS
In the 1980s, as agribusiness gobbled up more and more
profits, family farms across the
Midwest
failed. "The main causes of the current farm crisis are deflated land values, high
interest rates and the drying up of an export market for American agricultural
projects. The most important cause, however, is artificially low farm prices
that do not reflect the true 'supply and demand' of agricultural markets. One
farm activist recently pointed out that, because the individual farmer is a
small player in a large market, a few multinational marketing companies
determine the return farmers receive for their products. It is the buyer, not
the seller, who sets the prices. The structural inequality of the American food
distribution system is reflected in Department of Agriculture statistics for
1980, which indicate that, for every dollar the American consumer spent on
food, marketing and processing companies took 69$, farm suppliers drew 27, and
farmers received only 4. In many cases the cost of a cardboard cereal box is
higher than the farmer receives for the food it contains. In addition, the
billions of dollars of government subsidies, price supports and tax credits
often are more advantageous to large corporate farms than to small and
medium-sized family operations. One of the major consequences of the current
crisis is an unprecedented exodus from farming communities. According to the
Census Bureau, 399,000 people left their farms in 1985." - from
"Sowing Anti-Semitism: The Jewish Stake in the Farm Crisis," by Frank
D. Hornstein, Reform Judaism, Summer 1986. http://ajcarchives.org/AJC_DATA/Files/849.pdf
Argentina
,
a country that collapsed after drowning in debt to the IMF...
"Those who ruined
Argentina
," March 2002 issue of World Press Review (VOL. 49, No. 3), http://www.worldpress.org/americas/0302observateur.htm
"
Argentina
on fire: people’s rebellion facing the deep crisis of the neoliberal
market economy," a short piece from 2002 by Guido Galafassi, http://www.democracynature.org/dn/vol8/guido_argentina.htm
That's the nature of anti-Jewish oppression: Aurora Levins Morales and Dan Berger have pointed out
to me, correctly, that that’s the nature of all oppressions. Any
oppression gets us to target an oppressed group, and therefore to miss the fact
that our problems stem from a system of inequality, not from imagined flaws of
that group. However, I think this scapegoating mechanism, this diversion of
peoples’ sight from the sources of societal injustice is more clear and
visible with antisemitism because that is, it seems to me, the primary function
of antisemitism; in the way that, as some people have theorized, maintaining
sex roles is the primary function of homophobia or maintaining a split and
weakened working class is one of the central roles of racism against people of
color. I’m not sure of these ideas but they seem plausible to me.
And, though it’s painful to acknowledge, antisemitism is
already here in our movements...
On naming: I purposefully try to minimize how often I have to name
activists or organizations when I give examples of antisemitic behavior by
fellow Leftists. Although I know it's frustrating not to hear confirmable
details, I prefer not to contribute to an atmosphere of gossip and distrust,
like the tactics that COINTELPRO used intentionally to endanger and divide
activists. Activists are also already vulnerable to all sorts of attacks from
the Right and I don't want to take part in that. Finally, what's most important
to me is that we be able to analyze peoples' behavior and recognize antisemitic
patterns to avoid. It doesn't matter who commits the negative behavior.
The Adbusters magazine issue that ran a list of 50 prominent
neo-cons and proudly exposed its investigation of which of them were Jewish… In their March/April '04 issue, Adbusters magazine - a favorite in
my local radical bookstore and many others - printed a list of 50 NeoCons, with
flags next to the ones who are Jewish. The article, called "Why won't
anyone say they are Jewish?," received a ton of critical mail and Kalle
Lasn, the author & Adbusters' editor, described the negative reaction he
got to publishing the piece as “kneejerk
political correctness. It’s almost as if… many of them are Jews
themselves." See full text of the Canadian Jewish News
interview at http://www.cjnews.com/viewarticle.asp?id=2844 In his editorial response, Lasn
admitted publishing the article as a provocation, but wrote, "Is it not
just as valid to comment on the Jewishness of the neocons as it is to point out
that the majority of them are male or white or wealthy or from the Western
world or have studied at a particular university?" How interesting,
then, that what is being pointed out is not those things. Especially since
those things are what the vast majority of the
U.S.
elite shares. See the Adbusters text & their follow-up, reproduced in PDF
form at my website, at http://www.pinteleyid.com/adbusters.pdf
The story of why so many Neo-Cons are Jewish is
connected in part to antisemitism and Left history. The Jewish Neo-Cons were a
generation of Jewish Leftists who became disillusioned with the
Soviet Union
and Stalinism after World War II, and eventually
became Right-wing proponents of American global power. Though I have yet to see
a good in-depth piece on this issue, one useful article is "What is a neo-conservative anyway?" by Jim Lobe,
August 13, 2003
(Asia Times Online), http://www.pinteleyid.com/myths/Lobe-on-Neo-Cons.htm
The
World Conference Against Racism in 2001, where activists...handed out
virulently anti-Jewish flyers and caricatures of demonic, money-hungry Jews. The
incidents that marred the vital World Conference Against Racism are hard to
imagine. I would have difficulty believing that they really happened, if I had
not met activists who were present and experienced them. Below is an excerpt
from a speech by Cherie Brown. Note her analysis at the end of the way the
U.S.
benefited from anti-Jewish oppression.
"I
was in
Durban
as a delegate for two
organizations. I was part of an eight-person delegation with the organization I
direct, the National Coalition Building Institute. I was also part of United to
End Racism, a fifty-person delegation of people from around the world who came
to
Durban
to share tools and
practices for ending racism. It was not easy being a Jew in
Durban
.
The daily rhetoric about
Israel
and
Palestine
drowned out many
other important discussions. The important issues about racism kept getting
diverted during the week by the fights to enter "Zionism is racism"
language into the conference documents. One day, the African Heritage tent had scheduled
a press conference about the racism issues facing African Heritage peoples. But
the press conference was canceled because there were huge fights going on about
Israel/Palestine and the press were pre-occupied.
"As a U.S. Jew who was born after the
Holocaust, I have been insulated from many of the more negative attitudes about
Jews that a portion of the world’s peoples still hold. It was painful to
have to listen to so much hatred about Jews, to see buttons that read
"Hitler didn’t do his job." Particularly when these comments
came from other anti-racist activists. The singling out of Israel for
condemnation in Durban, having Israel be the only country in the entire world
noted in the UN NGO documents for its racism----were difficult.
"The most painful moment for me
happened on the last day of the conference. Earlier that week, Mary Robinson,
the head of the non-governmental meeting of the UN conference on racism, had
allegedly been shown a cartoon that was being circulated at the conference,
depicting a Jewish man with a hooked nose, a beard, and blood pouring from his
hands which were clasped in a greedy pose. Anyone viewing that cartoon could
only be horrified of its resemblance to oppressive blood libel characatures of
Jews that had been circulated for centuries in
Europe
.
In seeing the cartoon, Mary, an Irish Catholic woman apparently
said----"if these anti-Semitic cartoons are being passed out here at the
conference—then —I’m a Jew." The headlines of the daily
newspaper for the conference the next morning read: Mary Robinson says,
"I’m a Jew." And on the last day of the conference, at the
closing ceremonies, I sat in an outdoor amphitheater with thousands of
anti-racism activists from around the world. When Mary got up to speak, right
before the speech by Fidel Castro, the keynote speaker at the closing event,
she was hissed and booed by a large majority of the audience. My heart broke.
Here I was, at an international conference with anti-racism workers from around
the world. These were my closest allies, my friends and colleagues who were
devoting their lives every day to the fight against racism. And they were
booing an international leader because she had taken a stand against
anti-Semitism.
"And the
United
States
played a role in increasing this
anti-Semitism. Saying that the primary reason that the
US
was abandoning the conference in
Durban
was because of the criticisms of
Israel---
played into the hands of those that were advocating divide and conquer
politics. In fact, the Bush administration had been luke warm about the UN
Conference in
Durban
long before
the issues of
Israel
and
Palestine
became so pronounced.
The
U.S.
did
not want to participate in deliberations about the issue of reparations for the
descendants of slaves ---particularly if final U.N. documents could open the
way for future legal action and expensive class action law suites against the
United
States
. George Bush refused to even send a
high level delegation to the conference. But, the
U.S.
could conveniently stay silent about its concerns on the issue of reparations
and instead, hid behind their support of
Israel
.
The
U.S.
walked
out of the conference in
Durban
,
claimed it was because of anti-Israel rhetoric and their walk-out helped to
fuel an increase in the anti-Israel rhetoric. But rather than challenge the
U.S.
for its racist and imperialist policies, Jews and Palestinians were left once
again to fight it out with each other. And this is a primary example of how
anti-Semitism works. When activists on the left understand how anti-Semitism is
used as a divide and conquer mechanism to divert people’s attention away
from the underlying causes of oppression, we will be more prepared to fight
effectively against international issues of racism and imperialism."
From http://www.facingachallenge.com/2004/Keynotespeach%20By%20Cherie%20R.%20Brown.htm
"Antisemitic
literature of the most virulent kind was circulated by [purportedly]
pro-Palestinian groups at the WCAR. The banned publication, The Protocols of
the Learned Elders of Zion, was sold by the ABF. The book, published in
Iran
,
contained a new introduction describing Jews as “professional criminals
of history” and
Israel
as a “deadly cancerous tumor” and “satanic enemy.” The
introduction also asserted that
South Africa
was dominated by Jews and denied the Holocaust by referring to the
“Jewish Holocaust with all its fictitious recreations.” The IPCI
published and distributed a poster bearing an image of Adolf Hitler and the
slogan “What If I had won? There would be no
Israel
and no Palestinian’s blood shed. The rest is your guess.” Other
antisemitic material distributed at the conference included cartoons depicting
hook-nosed Jews with fangs dripping blood. Mary Robinson, UN high commissioner
for human rights and a prime mover behind the conference, publicly condemned
the cartoons, saying, that when she saw such material it made her a Jew too.
…The final NGO resolution was so extreme that, for the first time at a UN
conference, Mary Robinson refused to recommend that it be adopted at the main,
governmental one."
[excerpted
from the
South Africa
section of the Stephen Roth Insitute for the Study of Contemporary Racism and
Antisemitism's annual report on antisemitic incidents, http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/asw2001-2/sthafrica.htm]
"In
the week before September 11 there were already disturbing signs that
anti-semitism was reaching a new pitch. The attack on
New
York
took place three days after the chaotic close of
the Durban Anti-Racism Conference in which delegates from Arab governments and
NGOs sought unsuccessfully to have
Israel
designated as a racist apartheid state, and called for the establishment of a
UN committee to prosecute Israeli war crimes and to isolate totally the
country. The NGO resolution was not backed by major human rights groups such as
Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch. The European Roma Rights Centre
issued its own statement, written by Dimitrina Petrova, its executive director:
"The aggressive exclusion of Jewish participants and the accompanying,
blatantly intolerant anti-semitic spirit plaguing the entire process, prompted
us firmly to distance ourselves from this forum's unfortunate outcome."
"The language was so
intemperate that Mary Robinson, the UN human rights commissioner, refused to
present it to the governmental conference. The atmosphere at the conference has
been described as saturated with anti-semitism. In the exhibition area, a book
of cartoons reminiscent of the Nazi era, depicting Jews with talons for hands
and clutching blood-soaked money, was distributed by the Arab Lawyers Union.
One of the union's leaflets, in which the Star of David (a religious symbol of
Judaism, as well as an emblem of the Israeli flag) was superimposed on the Nazi
swastika, so shocked Robinson that she declared at an official dinner:
"When I see something like this, I am a Jew." A session on anti-
semitism at the conference was broken up by protestors. There was opposition to
having anti-semitism designated a hate crime and Robinson was booed when she
referred to the holocaust against the Jews. Karen Pollock, director of the
Holocaust Education Trust, which provides schools in
Britain
with resource materials and teacher training, represented the Board of Deputies
of British Jews at the conference. In a briefing to the board on her return,
she reported on the NGO forum: "Session after session seemed to provide
platforms for extreme anti-Jewish propaganda. A session on hate crime not only
had a speaker whose thesis was that Israel's existence was a 'hate crime', but when
one person asked a question, he was heckled with shouts of, 'Jew! Jew!
Jew!'."
-
From "The Hate That Doesn't Die," by Linda Grant, in The Guardian,
12/18/01
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4321814,00.html
From the Internet Centre Anti-Racism Europe:
"WCAR: The Morning After" articles, http://www.icare.to/wcar/
"When antisemitism is 'anti-racism,'" by Jeremy Jones, http://www.icare.to/wcar/2weeksindurban.html
PAGE 11 – ANTISEMITISM IS ALREADY HERE IN OUR MOVEMENTS (cont'd.) &
SIDEBAR: IF YOU LIKED COINTELPRO, YOU'LL LOVE THE PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF
ZION
The radical
U.S.
artist, whose posters fill the anti-globalization movement, who created an
entry about
Palestine
for
Iran
's
Holocaust-denial cartoon contest. For
the entry itself, see http://www.pinteleyid.com/bavayz/hamshahri-entry.htm.
For clarifying any doubts that the cartoonist knew he was entering a contest
that billed itself loudly as part of a Holocaust denial movement, see
Hamshahri's Rules of Entry at http://www.pinteleyid.com/bavayz/hamshahri.html
SIDEBAR: IF YOU LIKED COINTELPRO, YOU'LL LOVE THE PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF
ZION
Remember COINTELPRO...? For more information about COINTELPRO, check out these
resources:
Churchill, Ward and Jim Vander Wall. Agents of
Repression: The FBI’s Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the
American Indian Movement. (Boston: South End Press, 1988) http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0896086461&id=bD3w3UMiWBIC&pg=PP1&lpg=PP1&ots=OQep16NROd&dq=%22agents+of+repression%22&sig=N4t0MqRAJ-zEvJRzlyk4UbLguQ0
Public Eye's page on COINTELPRO: http://www.publiceye.org/liberty/Feds/cointelpro.html
Hadassa
Ben-Itto, The Lie
That Wouldn't Die: The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion (Mitchell Vallentine
& Company, 2005) http://www.amazon.com/Lie-That-Wouldnt-Die-Protocols/dp/0853035954
Timeline of the Protocols, at the US Holocaust
Memorial Museum's website: http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10007244
A forged text that claimed
to be minutes from a secret meeting of powerful Jews, it was
circulated by officers of
Russia
's
Czarist secret police… On the "Protocols of (the Learned Elders
of)
Zion
," see the following
web resources: http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mzionprotocol.html
http://www.holocaust-history.org/short-essays/protocols.shtml
…worried about the
growing revolutionary movement in
Russia
. This was the Revolution of 1905, which failed, though it brought about
reforms. See one article on 1905 at http://struggle.ws/anarchism/writers/anarcho/history/1905.html
…much of the
movement's grassroots momentum was coming from Jews… My own
great-grandfather and many others fled
Russia
after the efforts of 1905 were crushed and tons of Jews and others faced
repression. A weakly sourced article on the Revolution at Wikipedia states,
"The concessions came hand-in-hand with renewed, and brutal, action
against the unrest. There was also a backlash from the conservative elements of
society, notably in spasmodic anti-Jewish attacks; around five hundred were
killed in a single day in Odessa. The Tsar himself claimed that 90% of revolutionaries
were Jews; they were, in fact, a minority in
Russia
.
Still, Jews ended up playing an important revolutionary role due largely to
their above average levels of education (or even literacy, per se)
coupled with the pronounced persecution and antisemitism of the Tsarist
State." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution_of_1905, viewed 4/15/07
…police
agents plagiarized another author’s work of fiction and rewrote it… The original text was Maurice Joly's "The Dialogue in Hell Between
Machiavelli and Montesquieu," published in 1864 as an artful protest to
the reign of Napoleon III. For a breakdown comparing the most clearly
plagiarized parts of the "Protocols" to their original in Joly's
"Dialogue," see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protocols_of_the_Elders_of_Zion#Comparison_to_the_Dialogues
But the gravest insult
…is that this fraud…is parroted by some of our very own colleagues,
in our own spaces. I've had
friends who've been at anti-racism events where the text was paraphrased
supportively from the podium, and at conferences on justice in the
Middle East
where the text was actually being sold on an
activist literature table.
PAGE 12 - ...TO THE EVERYDAY.
A
note: The stuff I describe here is not intended as red-baiting ways
of "catching" the Left to get it in trouble. But we DO have to talk
about these things openly. We need to be open with each other about what's
going on in order to change it. And we need to share our experiences so that
when activists think they see antisemitism in action, they feel more
confident in speaking out.
The economic justice
organization that shows a video which purports to explain wealth inequality --
but instead focuses largely on the Rothschilds and paints major (gentile)
financiers and whole nations as mere pawns of a devious Jewish family. The
organization is a local one that teaches economics for lay audiences; the video
is "The Money Masters." This email from a fellow activist goes into
detail: http://www.pinteleyid.com/bavayz/moneymasters.htm While the video may not be intended to promote antisemitism, white supremacist
sites like http://www.wakeupordie.com/html/healthy/moneymasters.html show that it has been understood well as a tool for that end.
The anti-police brutality
demonstration where an invited community group calls for Jews and queers to be
killed, and no one speaks out -- not the demo's leaders, not any members of the
audience. See this email from a fellow activist: http://www.pinteleyid.com/bavayz/protest.htm
The comments one grows numb
to: how we don't get media coverage because the Jews, or the Zionists, control
the media... how the D.A. who's destroying this community is, by the way,
Jewish...and so on. I've
witnessed the former at the same panel (above), and heard the latter repeated
in local protests on the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal; to that movement's credit, I
and friends of mine have witnessed the movement's leaders condemn such remarks
several times over the years.
The latter is instructive in
understanding Left toleration of anti-Jewish manifestions. My early exposure to
those comments (I was a young teenager when I became active in that movement)
influenced my passivity or tendency to minimize antisemitic actions when I saw
them later in the movements; because they seemed "normal," and just
something to put up with.
...the number of Leftists with real antisemitic beliefs
is tiny. For one example of such
conscious antisemites, see Tony Greenstein's critique of Israel Shamir (and Dan McGowen), "Anti-Semitism is No Response to
Zionism," on the Arabic Media Internet Network's site,
3/9/2007
. http://www.amin.org/look/amin/en.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=7&NrArticle=39611&NrIssue=1&NrSection=3
The
Left needs to take responsibility to confront anti-Jewish targeting on four
levels. Most of these are not the fault of the Left; however, they are
all problems facing the Left. They must be prioritized as Left issues.
- In the world: We
need to start taking account of the global political role, the current
power and the future potential of antisemitism as a political force on a
large scale. This includes being aware of and resisting anti-Jewish
targeting
- from the top down in certain countries' leadership, like in Iran
- throughout society in countries, like the Ukraine, where there’s
not a social consensus against antisemitism; such that individual leaders'
condemnations don't reflect wider power
- from organized right-wing movements within countries where there is a
social consensus against antisemitism, as in parts of Western Europe
- Right-wing efforts
inside the Left: Conscious antisemites who try to make alliances
with or recruit from the Left; including attempts at infiltration.
(Example: "A Devil Amongst Us," http://onepeoplesproject.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1132&Itemid=2 )
- Inside the Left: Antisemitic
ideas and stances by members of the Left. These can include
- deeply committed Leftists who display basic common tendencies of Left
failure to be in solidarity with Jews
- people who, though they take part actively in Left actions and projects
and consider themselves Leftists, have a limited grasp on Left analyses;
often, people who were attracted to activism by a single issue, such as
the war, and are just as influenced by vaguely Right-wing ideas, populist
websites, etc.
- Inside the
communities we work with: Antisemitic trends or beliefs within
the communities whose struggles we actively support. Although many of
these communities are not self-identified as committed to the Left or
Right, these communities are physically present in our milieu just as we
are physically present in their milieus, their needs and ideas influence
our worldviews, and we influence theirs. Moreover, we should be imagining
them as power-holders in the society we seek to build; so it matters when
anti-Jewish myths circulated unconfronted within these communities.
What
has the bigger impact is not those individual Leftists who promote
antisemitism, but the way that institutionally, people and organizations
on the Left are so silent, uncomfortable, defensive, and even accusatory when
someone brings concerns about antisemitism up.
Here
are a few personal examples of how activists have reacted in my experience:
An
event was held in August, 2001 to highlight the World Conference Against
Racism, and build support for the movement for reparations for African
Americans. It was widely attended by local radicals and progressives, including
many who make antiracist work central to their activism. In a discussion that
purported to be about Zionism, the wife of one of the panelists stood up to
argue that Black people today need to learn from what Hitler did; that like
Germany in the '30s, Jews are the ones controlling the resources, and Black
people need to organize in that direction. Few people in the room countered it;
there was head-nodding and comments of support. When a Jew had spoken up about
earlier antisemitism in the presentation, the most supportive comments in the
room ranged from "Not all Jews are greedy," to saying that
the Left was really not against Jews, but Zionists; that Jews could get on the right
side by choosing not to be Zionists - and that (for those who didn't)
“the only good Zionist is a dead Zionist.” A Korean-American
activist expressed her opposition, saying that she saw people talking about
Jews like they do about Koreans; the response was that it was right to say it
about Koreans, too. Members of an anti-racist allies group, all gentiles, who
knew the Jewish activist and were present at the event, never spoke to her
about it. Months later, when they were asked why not, they said they
didn’t know how to act in such a situation. When the Jewish activist
sought out support from a local group in thinking about Black-Jewish relations,
she was directed to speak to another Jewish activist who had been among the
audience and not spoken out. This activist told her that she was paranoid, and
that she shouldn't have publicly disagreed with the speaker or taken up space
as a white person in a space for people of color. This woman said that, while
she might have challenged the speaker if anti-gay statements had been made, it
did not seem appropriate for Jews to do so.
A
friend of mine gave a talk on her experience working with the International
Solidarity Movement in
Palestine
,
to a local progressive religious congregation. In the Q&A, she was asked
about antisemitism in the Palestinian population and responds that she didn't
observe it. Afterwards, she told me privately that she saw tons of antisemitism
on Palestinian TV, and around her, but that she would never say that to an
audience. Hushing news of antisemitism is seen as a responsible way to protect
oppressed groups. Think back to what you learned (we hope) about racism.
Hushing up antisemitism, or not speaking out when you see it happening, is
as much a dynamic of antisemitism as making an antisemitic statement
yourself. We must find ways to point out oppression AND defend oppressed people
from footing all the blame.
It's
the eye-rolls, insults or changes of subject when someone raises antisemitism
in a meeting or event... One of the most
disturbing common responses to news of antisemitism is Leftists explaining the antisemitic
incident away by saying that it was really an intentional act of Jews to create
the illusion that Jews are oppressed. This frequently takes the form (a la
conspiratorial Jewish power ideas) of saying that "the Mossad (
Israel
's
version of the CIA) did it." One indybay commenter that models this attitude writes,
"Racist jews put out more anti-jew drivel than the neo-nazis in order to
make themselves out to be the poor, needy victims." (from "Mike is
Really a Jew," comment by Spotlight,
6/29/05
, on www.indybay.org - http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2005/05/31/17450021.php)
PAGE
13 – NOT REALLY –
BECAUSE IT'S NOT SO NEW.
Anarchist forefather Pierre
Proudhon’s treatises on capitalism used antisemitic imagery that calls to
mind fascist theory...
See some analysis in "Pierre
Joseph Proudhon, Harbinger of Fascism," by J. Salwyn Schapiro, The
American Historical Review, Vol. 50, No. 4. (Jul., 1945), pp. 714-737.
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8762%28194507%2950%3A4%3C714%3APJPHOF%3E2.0.CO%3B2-E
The
web-based Anarchist Encyclopedia describes Proudhon as follows: French
anarchist philosoper, a printer by trade, a profession which gave birth to many
anarchists, but Proudhon was the first to call himself an anarchist. In the
mid-1800s he was the leading left intellectual in Europe, far surpassing Marx's
notoriety or Bakunin's.
Proudhon had the profoundest effect upon the workers' movement in the 19th
century & his ideas influenced some of the most notable later anarchists,
including Leo
Tolstoy & Michael
Bakunin. http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/ProudhonPierre-Joseph.htm
Karl Marx, in an early
debate against an antisemitic colleague, made use of virulently racist images of Jews... See his 1843 essay, "On 'The Jewish Question,'" at www.pinteleyid.com/marx.html . See excerpts from Marx's personal letters at any number of red-baiting anti-Left websites and blogs on the web... Some of them may be mistranslations or frauds, but a number of these quotes are, unfortunately, accurate.
FOOTNOTE: His words contrasted sharply with Jews' reality; Jews in Marx's own Prussia had still been in vast poverty as of the early 1800s.... In the middle of the eighteenth century, 80% of German Jews lived at the poorest level of German society. (Amos Elon, The Pity of It All, [New York: Metropolitan Books, 2002] p. 29) At the beginning of the 19th century the figures had hardly budged: In Prussia, for example, according to the Leo Baeck Institute's figures, 70% of Jews continued to live in poverty (W.T. Angress, "The Judenwahlen and the Jewish Question," Leo Baeck Insitute Yearbook 28 1983] 375.) - and "more rich Jews lived in Prussia than anywhere else." (Elon, 102) It would take 25 years after Marx's essay for more than half of Prussia's Jews to reach the solid middle class. (Elon, 29.)
In the 1880s, leading
radicals and socialist newspapers in
Russia
encouraged Russian peasants engaging in pogroms…
I
quote at length from Abraham Ascher's concise description of the Left reaction
to the pogroms:
"The
pogroms of the 1880s were a turning-point for many Jewish revolutionaries in
Russia
,
not so much because of the unprecedented intensity and duration of the
disorders, but because substantial numbers among the enlightened and
progressive elements of society were indifferent to them or even approved of
them. At least during the early stages of the attacks the government of
Alexander III opposed them while, ironically, a significant number of
revolutionaries welcomed them. Both believed that the pogroms might set off the
general social revolution. While provincial governors were ordered to suppress
the violence and protect the Jews, all the major socialist papers except one
carried articles hailing the pogroms as the first sign that the masses were
bestirring themselves.
"Thus, one Narodovolets, reporting
on the disorders in
Odessa
, assured
his readers that the slogan of the pogromshchiki was: "Let us
finish off the Jews, and then we will revolt against the Russians. " He
warned the revolutionary movement not to stand aside but to strive to lead the
forces of rebellion. A Chernyiperedelets explained that the peasants
had turned against the Jews first only because they considered exploitation by
them more odious than by their own countrymen. In the lead article of a leaflet
a Narodovolets, while admitting that the violence had not been initiated
by an organized group, claimed with satisfaction that they were an
"echo" of revolutionary agitation. Elsewhere in the same leaflet the
Jews were accused of sharpening the general hostility to them by appealing for
help to the a~thorities.Th e most extreme statement was made in the Ukraine on
August 30, 1881, by the Executive Committee of Narodnaya Volya who, in a
proclamation, encouraged the people to smite the Jews, allegedly the greatest
exploiters of the peasants. The man who apparently inspired the document, G.
Romanenko, was undoubtedly an anti-Semite, but most of the other
revolutionaries welcoming the pogroms were not. They were simply so convinced
ofthe revolutionary potential of the peasants and so desperate to see it
manifest itself that they were prepared to clutch at straws. Moreover,
cognizant of the failurein 1874 of the "Go-to-the-People" movement to
impose its program upon the peasants, the radicals now argued in favor of
agitating on the basis of the peasants' interests and demands.
"Many young Jewish radicals, thoroughly
dismayed and disillusioned by this turn of events, left
Russia
and began to reappraise their political commitments..."
From
"Pavel Axelrod: A Conflict between Jewish Loyalty and Revolutionary
Dedication," by Abraham Ascher,
Russian Review, Vol. 24, No. 3. (Jul., 1965), pp. 249-265 (this
section specifically on pages 250-252).
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0036-0341%28196507%2924%3A3%3C249%3APAACBJ%3E2.0.CO%3B2-D
See also:
Pogroms : Anti-Jewish Violence in Modern Russian
History. Edited by John D. Klier and
Shlomo Lambroza.
Cambridge
;
New York
:
Cambridge
University
Press, 1992.
"Russian-Jewish Intellectuals Confront the
Pogroms of 1881: The Example of 'Razsvet'," by Steven Cassedy, The
Jewish Quarterly Review, New Ser., Vol. 84, No. 2/3 (Oct., 1993 - Jan.,
1994), pp. 129-152
…significant numbers
of gentile fighters acted out antisemitism at the Jews fighting beside them -
refusing to team up in battle, even murdering Jewish fighters and civilians…A
valuable resource from the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation [www.jewishpartisans.org] explains
that among non-Jewish resistance fighters in Western Europe, "Jewish
fighters within the partisan units, even as they fought on behalf of Jewish
survival, were often required to hide their Jewishness or it was
‘kindly’ overlooked."
"In part, [assimilation] explains how
the Jews of Western Europe were able to blend fairly easily into resistance
networks: the Maquis (underground) in
France
,
Liberty
and Justice in
Italy
,
and the Fighting Squads in
Holland
.
But while Jews fought alongside non-Jews in each of these partisan groups, the
painful history of antisemitism had taught them to be careful in their dealings
with non-Jews both within and outside the organization. As a Greek Jewish
partisan recalled, it was best “not to tell we were Jewish.”
In
Eastern
Europe
, conditions were
worse:
"[T]he deep antisemitism of many of the
partisan unit members meant that Jewish partisans faced terrible dilemmas while
serving in them. ... The Home Army (Armia Krajowa, or AK) was the largest
underground partisan movement in
Poland
, and took its orders from the Polish
Government-in-exile in
London
. In the AK, antisemitism was not merely the belief
system of certain members, it was official policy. The AK did not accept Jews.
Norman Salsitz had tried to enter the AK, but was turned away. “I wanted
to join the AK to be equal with all the other Polish fighters and not to be
afraid for the AK members who fought on the same side.” An AK document
penned in 1943 stated that Jews were an “alien minority” that would
have no place in post-war
Poland
and had to be gotten rid of “without
exception.” Thus, not only did the AK not accept Jews in its ranks,
often, its members went out of their way to kill Jews. Unlike the Germans who
were on unfamiliar territory, the AK was composed of local people who knew the
area well. This made them extremely dangerous as Jews had nowhere to hide.
“They looked for us in haystacks and sheds,” declared Simon
Trakinski, “They killed us even though we fought for the same
side.” As a result of this policy, few Jews survived in areas dominated
by the AK.
"Sometimes, Jewish partisans
were singled out for the most dangerous or difficult assignments in their units
[such as the one remembered by partisan Martin Petarsek, who was subjected to
abuse by being given purposefully impossible tasks and, when he could not
complete them, was executed for "disobeying orders."] ...Despite the
Soviet history of problematic attitudes and polices towards the Jews, the Jews
fared better in the partisans under communism. ...Jews fought alongside
non-Jews in the Red Army and as compatriots with Soviet partisans. Still,
antisemitism in the forests ran deep. Many Jewish partisans were murdered by
communist comrades. Even so [...] there were Jews who saw [communism] as the
answer to antisemitism. Martin Petrasek was convinced of it and “felt
pretty comfortable” fighting alongside communists. Nonetheless,
“for some reason,” he still thought “it better that I
don’t say that I’m Jewish. Even if I saw a Jewish family…I
tried to help them as a non-Jew.”
"Despite these considerable
obstacles, Jewish partisans found clever avenues to overcome the disadvantages
facing them. Jewish partisans in non-Jewish groups sometimes were able to help
other Jews surreptitiously, whether those Jews were other partisans or
desperate civilians. When the AK was organizing a mission to murder Jews known
to be hiding on a farm, Norman Salsitz ‘volunteered’ to be one of
the two men to carry out the job. Salsitz had earlier found a way into the
AK—by changing his name and passing himself off as a Catholic. While en
route to the farmhouse, Salsitz first shot his partner, then coaxed the Jews
from their hiding place by addressing them in Yiddish, eventually leading them
to a Jewish partisan group in the forest.
"Joe Kubryk did something similar.
Kubryk had left home at age fourteen, joining a group of partisans a year
later. The partisan unit included Ukranians, Poles and Russians, and
“none of them really liked the Jews,” he explained. When Kubryk
discovered that Jewish partisans were getting killed in far greater numbers
than non-Jews in his unit, he investigated, learning that non-Jewish partisans often
simply shot their Jewish partners, reporting them as having been killed in
action. Kubryk informed a Jewish commander, who in turn informed his superior,
a non-Jew. When nothing happened, the Jewish commander threatened to inform up
the chain of command to
Moscow
itself,
which finally triggered a response. Eighteen non-Jewish partisans were
court-marshaled and hung “from eighteen different trees with a sign
explaining why.” Kubryk was careful to emphasize that “They
didn’t hang them because they were antisemitic…. They were hung
because they killed partisans.”
Exerpted from "Study Guide: Antisemitism in the
Partisans," which can be downloaded at http://www.jewishpartisans.org/pdfs/AntiSem_study%20guide14.pdf
Anti-colonial
governments came to power, but instead of bringing the pan-Arab unity and
equality of which so many had dreamt, hundreds of thousands of Jews were
stripped of their citizenships and property and expelled, with it justified as
a response to Israel.
A note on sources: It is
frustratingly difficult to find non-biased resources on the conditions that
forced Jews to flee Arab countries post-WWII. The trauma suffered by Jewish
refugees from Arab and North African countries has been co-opted as a tool of
Right-wing Israel "advocacy" groups in attempts to minimize
Palestinian refugees' claims, and almost every easily-accessible (ie, web)
resource is tainted by the language of that agenda. Within these limitations, I
have found a few neutral summaries on the web:
"The Displacement of Jews from Arab Lands," by Ada Aharoni, of the Historical Society of Jews From Egypt, http://www.hsje.org/displacement_of_jews_from_arab_c.htm
"The Other Refugees: Jews of the Arab World," by George E. Gruen, in Jerusalem Letter #102, June 1, 1988, http://www.jcpa.org/jl/jl102.htm
A good essay which speaks to activists is "A Big Peace is Missing from This 'Peace'," by Loolwa Khazzoom, http://www.loolwa.com/archive/articles/pgs/piece.html
A good piece that critiques the traditional Israeli narrative of Arab Jewish immigration to Israel is Ella Shohat's "Rupture And Return: A Mizrahi Perspective On The Zionist Discourse," in Crossing Boundaries: New Perspectives on the Middle East (The MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies), Vol. 1, May 2001, http://web.mit.edu/cis/www/mitejmes/intro.htm .
…it shattered a
generation of Jewish progressives. A
great fictional account of the experience, through the eyes of a Jewish child,
is Chaim Potok's novel, Davita's Harp. Highly recommended for people who
want to understand Jewish community or children of radicals.
PAGE 14 – WHAT'S
REALLY NEW… & THE REVOLUTION, THE JEWS & THE "GENEROUS
OFFER"
Ever since
Israel
won the '67 war... The best source I've seen so far on this –
detailing the wider shift in U.S. foreign policy in general, not just the
Right's – is Noam Chomsky's The Fateful Triangle: The United States,
Israel & the Palestinians (London: Pluto Press, 1999)http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0745315305&id=aHphMCIkhK0C&pg=PP1&lpg=PP1&ots=7e-Io6gUNl&dq=fateful+triangle&sig=u6vn_WXobYxLHzSKXZQMaq3CqZA
The Left's problem of silencing oppressed groups comes in part from how Western European gentile revolutionaries responded to oppressed groups on their home turf. As Ella Shohat puts it, "Jews formed
Europe
's
internal 'other,' long before the nations of
Latin America
,
Africa
, and
Asia
became its external 'other.'" (Israeli
Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation [Austin: University
of Texas Press, 1989]) For more on this, see "Some Preliminary Thoughts
& Readings on Christian Dominance & the Origins of Racism," http://www.pinteleyid.com/A2J/antiracism.pdf
A few quotes from the intellectuals
of the age [all taken from Mendes-Flohr & Reinharz' The Jew in the Modern World] :
"[Jews must have human rights, for] they are human
and their malevolence does not justify our becoming like them. ...Still, I see
absolutely no way of giving them civic rights; except perhaps, if one night we
chop off all of their heads and replace them with new ones, in which there
would not be one single Jewish idea. And then, I see no other way to protect
ourselves from the Jews, except if we conquer their promised land for them and
send all of them there." - Johann Gottlieb Fichte, in an essay on the
French Revolution, 1793.
"We must...believe these people susceptible of
morality, until we are shown, that they have invincible obstacles in their
physical organization, and in their religious and moral constitution. Let us
cherish morality, but let us not be so unreasonable as to require it of those
who we have compelled to become vicious. Let us reform their education, to
reform their hearts; it has long been observed, that they are men as well as
we, and they are so before they are Jews." - Abbe Gregoire, in "On
the Physical, Moral and Political Reformation of the Jews," 1789.
"The emancipation of the Jews in a thoroughgoing,
successful, safe manner will only be possible when they are emancipated not as
Jews, that is, as forever alien to the Christians, but as human beings who are
no longer separated from their fellowmen by barriers which they wrongly
consider to be all-important. ...If the Jews want to become real - they cannot
achieve it in their chimerical nationality, only in the real nations of our
time living in history..." - Bruno Bauer, The Jewish Question, 1843.
"In short, we find in them only an ignorant and
barbarous people, who have long united the most sordid avarice with the most
detestable superstition... Still, we ought not to burn them." - Voltaire
on Jews, 1756
PAGE 15 – WHAT'S
REALLY NEW… & THE REVOLUION, THE JEWS & THE "GENEROUS
OFFER" (cont'd.)
...the Right got to take it because the Left was
silent. This blame cannot,
however, be placed solely at the feet of the Left. The conversion of
antisemitism into an issue that stopped being perceived as progressive also has
much to do with the behavior of the groups that did keep antisemitism
as an important issue on their agenda. The Anti-Defamation League, for
instance, lost all credibility with many social justice activists when it was
revealed that ADL gathered intelligence on Left-wing groups. See "The
A.D.L. Under Fire: It's Shift to Right Has Led to Scandal", by Dennis King
and Chip Berlet, The New York Times,
May 28, 1993
, p. A29 (Op-Ed).
In the 1930s and 40s, Jewish
culture - religious and irreligious - could be seen and heard on the streets of
any American city with a Jewish presence. Despite the Americanization process that first and second-generation
American Jews were already going through. For a study of Jewish acculturation
in the 1920s
U.S.
(specifically,
New York
), see Deborah Dash Moore, At Home In America:
Second Generation New York Jews (Columbia University Press, 1983). http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0231050631&id=POfJa1DJz9oC&pg=PR1&lpg=PR1&ots=x6Uiuapx06&dq=moore+%22at+home+in+america%22&sig=Yc-0JOQlWGXX-HjECIWxhVA7n9Q
The
U.S.,
now home to the world’s largest remaining Jewish population, appeared to
be the safest country left. The Holocaust annihilated the world's largest concentration of Jews had been
annihilated, the
U.S.
was now home to the new largest population of Jews on Earth. Jewish
vulnerability had always been related to Jews' small numbers in each society,
yet the appearance of safety in the
U.S.
was not only based on strength in numbers. The
U.S.
had historically offered Jews quite a different living situation than they had
experienced in other countries, partly because of the centrality of freedom of
religion to the foundations of
U.S.
society. Leonard Dinnerstein writes that, although antisemitism is present in
U.S.
society, "It must also be also be emphasized…that in no Christian
country has antisemitism been weaker than in the
United
States
. Although always present - and at
some times virulently so - conflicting American attitudes and traditions of
tolerance have for the most part minimized its impact. There have never been
pogroms in
America
;
there have never been respectable antisemitic political parties in
America
;
and there have never been any federal laws curtailing Jewish opportunities in
America
,"
unlike Jewish experience throughout much of the world. Antisemitism in
America
, Leonard Dinnerstein (Oxford University Press, 1995), 245. 'Freedom of
religion,' however, was not a ticket to completely free expression for Jewish
culture in the U.S.; because the dividing line was race in this country rather
than religion, acceptance and safety have been conditional on Jews ensuring
that they would be seen as white.
…with the G.I. Bill,
many were finally making it to the middle class. In the new suburbs, where Jews
lived on the inside of white society for the first time… See Karen Brodkin's article, “How
Did Jews Become White Folks?,” p.
78-102, in Race, Steven Gregory and Roger Sanjek, eds. (Rutgers
University Press, 1994) http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0813521092&id=ROuqj_xIRMoC&pg=PP1&lpg=PP1&ots=L2jl9WWGZv&dq=race+sanjek&sig=276vJUn3TumTvvSsd5lBllswjVA or the book version, How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About
Race in America, by Karen Brodkin-Sacks (Rutgers University Press, 1998) http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN081352590X&id=itdBdt8OvMwC&pg=PA193&lpg=PA193&ots=x8auPWZdil&dq=sacks+jews+white&ie=ISO-8859-1&sig=omI3ynqXMTcM43i_E7Ia00uOxjE#PPP1,M1
For the experience of Jewish G.I.s while in the army, see Deborah Dash
Moore's G.I. Jews: How World War II Changed a Generation (Harvard
University Press, 2004).http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0674015096&id=6dExD3wChyMC&pg=PP1&lpg=PP1&ots=BjsK_5PH5m&dq=%22g.i.+jews%22&sig=D06x9elNy-WSzcSh9cITs0zhzhs
Progressive
Jews became one of the central targets. As cultural historian Paul Buhle has reflected, "One
subtext of McCarthyism, nominally the pursuit of 'communist subversion,' was
simply to stay in line or else... A second subtext, barely disguised, was
anti-Semitism. The message from rural Southern barber shops to Senate chambers
- that 'Jews control
Hollywood
' and
that Jews were poisoning
America
had a special meaning to those faced with 'investigation.' To clear oneself, to
resume something like a normal life, it was never enough to declare personal
departure from the Left (most intellectuals had already quit or were on their
way out of the Communist Party, disillusioned by Stalin's tyranny and Russian
anti-Semitism). One had to name names, most especially those of intimate
associates who had shared decades of participation in social movements. A
blacklistee recently reminded me of the race memories stirred by the
red-hunting committees. In earlier days the czar, caliph, or general had
demanded something strikingly similar: We let you live, Jew, if you inform
on your friends. Otherwise..."
Rifke Feinstein of the Congress of Secular Jewish Organizations… In a personal conversation with the author,
Oct. 9,
2005
. Learn more about the Congress of Secular Jewish
Organizations (CSJO) at http://www.csjo.org
PAGE 16 –
IN 1903, JEWS WERE A RADICAL FORCE…
PAGE 17 - AN OPEN REQUEST FROM A JEW ON THE LEFT
(cont'd.)
PAGE 18 – TIME OUT: A WORD TO JEWS
PAGE 19 – TIME OUT: A WORD TO WHITE PEOPLE and A WORD TO EVERYONE
…criticizing Israeli policy or the ideology of
Zionism is in no sense inherently antisemitic. On the contrary; an atmosphere that silences critiques
endanger Jews, as well as Palestinians. In a speech that pro-Israel Jewish
peace activist and antisemitism theorist Cherie Brown gave to the Facing A
Challenge conference on antisemitism and the Left in 2004, Brown listed
five specific actions that activists and everyday people might take to reduce
anti-Semitism. The fifth of these was, "We absolutely need to stop saying that any criticism
of
Israel
or the policies of the Israeli government is
anti-Semitic---or that those who do speak out against any of the policies of
the Israeli government are against Jews. ...Silencing a
diversity of views on
Israel
will not end anti-Semitism. Jewish history is filled with periods where Jews
and Gentiles were silent. And the silence did not stop anti-Semitism.
It’s time to welcome with open arms a wide range of views in our
communities." http://www.facingachallenge.com/2004/Keynotespeach%20By%20Cherie%20R.%20Brown.htm
PAGE 20 – "YOU'RE NOT PRO-PALESTINIAN…!"
In fact, they [Palestinians] often have a sharper eye
than others for catching and cutting off antisemitism. For some examples of Palestinians being in the
forefront of calling out antisemitism within the Left or in the world:
Ali Abunimah and Hussein Ibish's essay, "Serious
Concerns About Israel Shamir,"
April 16, 2001
, http://www.abunimah.org/features/010416shamir.html
Joseph Massad's essay, "Blaming the Lobby," http://www.pinteleyid.com/bavayz/massad.htm
Qais S. Saleh's "A Horseless Rider, the Protocols
of the Elders of Zion & Imported Bigotry," http://www.counterpunch.org/saleh1112.html
In my personal
experience, I find that my friends and activist acquaintances who are
Palestinian are often a lot less hesitant than others to openly note when they
see something antisemitic (see, for example, the post "Good Idea,"
from Jul 18, 2006 by Palestina at http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2006/07/72966.html).
Probably for a lot of good reasons; one, I think, is that they know that
they can point out simple truths without being slammed or accused of secret
motivations to promote Israeli interests - the way I and other Jews are.
PAGE 21 - "YOU'RE NOT
PRO-PALESTINIAN…!" (cont'd.) and CHART
American Israel Public
Affairs Committee, a major Right-wing, Israeli expansionist lobby group. AIPAC is frequently referred to as
pro-Israel, though its policies put Israelis – Jewish and non-Jewish –
in serious danger. No matter what our stance on anti-Zionism or Zionism, social
justice activists should not go along uncritically with this wording, just as many
reject anti-choice groups' co-optation of the term "pro-life." Rabbi Bruce
Warshal writes of AIPAC as a partisan group with an over Right-wing agenda, not
general "pro-Israel" intentions, and writes, " AIPAC does not
even represent the feelings of the average Israeli, let alone the average
American Jew":
"It is controlled by right-wing,
rich Jewish neo-conservatives. As one manifestation of the truth of this
assertion one merely has to look at its annual meeting this past month. At a
time when Vice President Cheney's popularity has dropped below 20 percent, the
4,500 delegates to the AIPAC convention gave him a standing ovation for almost
a minute before he even opened his mouth and then proceeded to give him 48
rounds of applause in a 35-minute speech. (As my colleague Leonard Fein pointed
out, that's once every 43.7 seconds). Considering that 75 percent of American
Jews voted for Kerry, it is obvious that these people are out of the mainstream
of Jewish thought. At the same conference, preceding the recent Israeli
elections, these delegates were addressed by Ehud Olmert (Kadima), Amir Peretz
(Labor) and Benjamin Netanyahu (Likud) by video link from
Israel
.
Olmert and Peretz received polite applause. The AIPAC delegates cheered
enthusiastically for Netanyahu, especially when he presented his hard line that
was overwhelmingly rejected by the Israeli electorate. … Beware of these
self-appointed guardians of
Israel
and Jewish values. In the end they will destroy everything that makes Judaism a
compassionate religion, and if in their zeal they do not destroy
Israel
,
they certainly will not make it more secure." [ http://www.shalomctr.org/node/1121]
See also "AIPAC Hijack: With Friends Like These," by Gidon D. Remba at http://www.realisticdove.org/archives/78
PAGE 22 - ON TARGETING
"ZIONISM"
For many antisemitic groups, “Zionists”
are the the demonic Jews controlling the world, Protocol-style; and
“Zionism” is the general body of evildoing by Jews. One good illustration of this is the accusations that
the Argentine military confronted Jewish publisher Jacobo Timerman with when
they captured and tortured him. Jacobo Timerman's autobiography, Prisoner
Without a Name, Cell Without a Number,
is an excellent source for understanding this dimension of what has
been called "fictive anti-Zionism."
It's a nationalism, and, as often happens with nationalisms, it has
not fully liberated its people and has oppressed others in the process. One of the most original ways I've seen
someone discuss the paradox of Zionism is Steve Cohen, in the 2005 introduction
to a web reprint of his now-classic text, "That's Funny, You Don't Look
Anti-Semitic." Cohen writes that what he sees happening is
"the confirmation as far
as I'm concerned of a political analysis of anti-Semitism which in my naivety,
strikes me as obvious but which I've never seen articulated anywhere else. This
is that the Jewish Chronicle and Socialist Worker are both correct. And
incorrect. Zionism is anti racist. And Zionism is racist. I cannot see how Zionism
in its triumphant form (the Israeli state) is anything except essentially
racist. It was founded on the dispossession of the Palestinians. And it
continues on the super exploitation and humiliation of the Palestinians as the
"other". To deny this strikes me as fundamentally immoral. I also
happen to think that two states, one of which by definition has to be
exclusively Jewish is similarly immoral. I think majoritarianism (the
legitimisation of an entity through numbers) is immoral wherever it presents
itself—it leads at the very least to forced population movement and at
its most extreme to ethnic cleansing and all that implies. I'll leave open to
discussion and personal judgement the point on this continuum that
Israel
may already guilty and at which a divided state would become guilty.
"On the other hand it
seems to me equally undeniable that Zionism in its inception was anti-racist.
It was a reaction against, a way of dealing with, European anti-Semitism. Maybe
as a revolutionary socialist writing in Prestwich in 2005 it would not be my
way. However as a Jew of whatever political persuasion in
Europe
after the coming to power of Hitler in 1933 or the defeat of the revolution in
Spain
in 1939 I may well have had a different position. And if fascism ever took over
here and Jews were barred entry elsewhere then I guess I might take a different
position. I empathise with the "bolt hole" theory of Zionism. I
appreciate the significance of the remarks by Isaac Deutscher, the Polish
Marxist ex-rabbi, who wrote in later life "In this controversy (between
socialism and Zionism) Zionism has scored a horrible victory, one of which it
could neither wish nor expect; six million Jews had to perish in Hitler's gas
chambers in order that Israel should come to life ... If instead of arguing
against Zionism in the 1920s and 1930s I had urged European Jewry to go to
Palestine, I might have saved some of the lives that were later extinguished in
Hitler's gas chambers" (Israel's Spiritual Climate). …It is
because Zionism is both racist and anti-racist that I call myself an
anti-Zionist Zionist."
-
See the full introducation at http://www.engageonline.org.uk/ressources/funny/
Cohen continues, "It is also because Zionism is racist and anti racist
that there is an even more urgent need to rigorously distinguish anti-Zionism
from anti-Semitism."
There
are many rational reasons why some people are opposed to the philosophy that
there should be a Jewish state, just as lots of rational reasons motivate others to believe a Jewish state is
neccessary.
For an anti-Zionist Jewish perspective, see "Reflections on Zionism From a Dissident Jew," by
Tim Wise, http://www.zmag.org/Sustainers/Content/2001-09/05wise.htm
For a pro-Zionist Jewish perspective, see "Reclaiming
the Z Word ...or Why I Can Care About My Own People and Others at the Same Time,"
by Chris MacDonald-Dennis, http://ameinu.net/perspectives/israel.php?articleid=158
For an anti-Zionist non-Jewish
perspective, see "The Forgotten '-ism:' An Arab American Women’s Perspective on Zionism,
Racism and Sexism," by the Arab
Women’s Solidarity Association, San Francisco Chapter, http://awsa.net/forgottenism.pdf
For a pro-Zionist non-Jewish perspective, see
"Defending Zionism in a Time of Occupation and Oppression," by
Stephen Zunes, http://janip.net/defending-zionism-in-a-time-of-occupation-and-oppression/
PAGE 23 – INNOCULATE YOUR
PALESTINE
WORK AGAINST ANTISEMITISM
PAGE 24 –
ISRAEL
DID NOT, AND DOES NOT, CAUSE ANTISEMITISM
Israel doesn't make New
York, Damascus and Mexico City vendors sell the Protocols, or fund local movie
industries to televise them. As both
Syria
and
Egypt
did
in recent years. See "Sattelite network recycles the Protocols of the
Elders of Zion," http://www.adl.org/special_reports/protocols/protocols_recycled.asp,
re the Syrian production of "Ash-Shatat" and the Egyptian production
of "Rider Without A Horse."
...when
people beat and murdered Jews in the streets in
Syria and Aden
in 1947,
Libya
in 1968, and elsewhere...
A note on sources: It is frustratingly difficult to find non-biased
resources on the conditions that forced Jews to flee Arab countries post-WWII.
The trauma suffered by Jewish refugees from Arab and North African countries
has been co-opted as a tool of Right-wing Israel "advocacy" groups in
attempts to minimize Palestinian refugees' claims, and almost every
easily-accessible (ie, web) resource is tainted by the language of that agenda.
On Syria: "In the wake of
Israel
's
Declaration of Independence and the subsequent failure of Arab military forces
to defeat the fledgling Jewish state, Syrian rage turned to the local Jewish
population. The Syrian government condoned and even organized popular attacks
on Jews in Damascus and Aleppo, where many were beaten and murdered, Jewish
institutions destroyed and holy books burned. An economic boycott of Jewish
businesses and professionals together with seizures of Jewish property left
many destitute. ...Fearing for their lives, most Jews fled, leaving behind what
they could not carry." Harold Troper, "
Syria
,
A Special Case: A Comparison of the Campaigns on Behalf of Syrian and Soviet
Jews," p. 52, in Shulewitz, The Forgotten Millions (a book I can't recommend except for this one well-researched essay)
On Yemen: "In 1947, after the partition vote, Muslim rioters, joined by the local police force, engaged in a bloody pogrom in Aden that killed 82 Jews and destroyed hundreds of Jewish homes. Aden's Jewish community was economically paralyzed, as most of the Jewish stores and businesses were destroyed. Early in 1948, the false accusation of the ritual murder of two girls led to looting.2" See more summary and sources at http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/yemenjews.html#2
On Libya: George Gruen writes, "Riots in Libya were so severe that virtually all of the remaining Jews in the country -- slightly more than 4,000 -- were evacuated to Italy with the help of concerned Italian and American diplomats." For a personal account, see the essay by Gina Bublil Waldman in The Flying Camel, edited by Loolwa Khazzoom (Seal Press, 2003).
…all but the
Dominican Republic
… Some
details about the Dominican Republic's role are at http://motlc.learningcenter.wiesenthal.org/text/x06/xm0633.html
...often
been accused of shirking wartime duty... For some of the German
charges against Jews after World War I see Lindemann, Anti-Semitism Before
the Holocaust, "The Jew As Shirker and War Profiteer," p. 77-79.
PAGE 25 – WHY DO MANY JEWS FIGHT SO HARD
AGAINST THE RIGHT TO RETURN? and DECONSTRUCTING COMMON MYTHS: CONTROLLING THE
WORLD / THE GOVERNMENT
PAGE 26- [MYTH] CAUSING THE WARS /
CAUSING THE LOSS OF WARS and WITH ALL THE TIME THEY SAVE…WHAT DO JEWS THINK ABOUT?
PAGE 27 – [MYTH] CAUSING THE WARS
/ CAUSING THE LOSS OF WARS (cont'd.) and …WHAT DO JEWS THINK
ABOUT?
PAGE 28 – CONTROLLING THE BANKS and …WHAT DO JEWS THINK ABOUT?
PAGE 29 – TIPS FOR EVERY ACTIVIST
PAGE 30 – WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF OUR
MOVEMENTS DON'T ACT?
We’ll
aid reactionary regimes…that seek to boost themselves by blaming their
own actions on
Israel
,
as the President of
Sudan
does when he claims the
Darfur
genocide is
a hoax perpetrated by
Israel
. See "
Sudan
's president against
Israel
," by David Byers, in the Jerusalem Post, http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1162378504117&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
PAGE 31 – BUT WHAT IF WE SUCCEED
IN THIS?
PAGE 32 – GLOSSARY
INSIDE BACK – GLOSSARY (cont'd.)
BACK
THANK
YOUs (or as we say in Philly… THANK YOUSE!)